Islam, Gender, Women Unit
The IGW program unit will not participate in the virtual AAR meeting in June of 2025.
This Call for Proposals is for the November meeting in Boston only.
New Books in the Study of Women and Gender in Islamic Studies
In keeping with our commitment to non-traditional programming, the 2025 IGW session will showcase recently published (since 2019) books of significance for the study of women and gender in Islamic studies. We envision a session in which 5 to 6 scholars propose to discuss a recent book (not their own work) they have found relevant for the field in ways that go beyond a simple focus on women and/or gender. Instead, we seek books that offer methodological and theoretical innovation, addressing broader questions of authority, tradition, feminism, and decoloniality. The goal of the session is to put the books (and potentially their authors) in conversation with each other and with scholars in the field of gender in Islamic studies.
The proposal, submitted through PAPERS, should be written like a book review that responds to all FOUR of the following prompts (each about 250 words, so the full proposal is 1000 words):
1. Provide a summary of the book including the core arguments and explain how the book’s structure and the arrangement of chapters shape and clarify these arguments.
2. Identify and analyze the book's methodological and theoretical contributions, significance, or interventions.
3. Formulate key questions the book raises, particularly regarding gendered authority, tradition, feminism, and decoloniality.
4. Reflect on how the book advances the field and informs your own research.
The session at the annual meeting in November will feature brief presentations on the books, followed by table-based discussions focused on each book.
In this session, which will be co-sponsored with the Study of Islam program unit, we envision the presentation of a specific reading assignment (chapter or journal article length) that contributes to teaching gender in Islamic studies. We invite proposals that explain how the instructor has taught/is teaching a particular reading and what kind of assignment accompanies that reading. How does the assignment pedagogically enhance both the reading material assigned and the study of gender? Put another way, why this reading and why this assignment? How do they help an undergraduate better understand the issues surrounding gender and Islamic studies? In the proposal, please indicate the full citation of the reading and explain why you are interested in sharing it with others at the AAR.
The Islam, Gender, Women (IGW) Unit uses non-traditional programming to address meta-questions of the study of gender and women in relation to Islam and Muslims, to support the mentoring and development of its scholars, and to create resources and scholarly networks to advance the field. The name IGW signals that the study of gender and women is an essential subfield of the larger study of Islam and Muslims while shifting attention away from the “woman question in Islam” and toward the study of gender. Our unit examines the relational formation and subversion of genders, while still taking into account “women” as they are interpellated by complex social and symbolic systems.
IGW brings together scholars at all career stages, including those working outside the academy. It supports scholarly reflexivity in a collaborative and collegial setting, discussing methods/approaches and the professional dimensions of research and teaching in the field. It fosters collective consideration of the aims, evolution, and lacunae of the field as a way to nurture new lines of inquiry. Our non-traditional programming, such as workshops and mentoring/networking sessions, aims to strengthen rather than compete with the work of related program units, prevent the segregation of scholarship on gender and women into one unit, encourage sustained “mainstream” engagement with questions of gender and women, and expand opportunities for collaboration and conversation with and among other units.