Watch Now! The Cunning of Gender Violence Pt. 3-3 (10/11/23) Book Launch Video Recording through BCRW
The third and final book launch event for for The Cunning of Gender Violence: Geopolitics and Feminism (Duke University Press 2023), originating out of the Religion and Global Framing of Gender Violence Working Group.
This third event was hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and a video recording of the event, as well as transcripts and more, are available through their website here.
Listen Today! The Cunning of Gender Violence Book Launch Pt. 2-3 (9/14/23) Audio Recording Available Now
Visit the Audio section of our Media tab, or click on the hyperlink, to check out the audio recording from the (9-14-23) Book Launch for The Cunning of Gender Violence (Duke University Press), titled “State Violence is Gender Violence,” hosted by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender.
This publication came out of the work of the Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence Working Group at CSSD.
Watch Now! The Cunning of Gender Violence Pt. 1-3 (9/13/23) Book Launch Event Available Here & on Youtube
CSSD has published a recording of "Civilizing Interventions: Humanitarianism and Gender Violence," a book launch event for The Cunning of Gender Violence: Geopolitics and Feminism (Duke University Press 2023), originating from the Religion and Global Framing of Gender Violence Working Group.
This event features scholars and experts crucial to the production of this work, including Jelani Cobb, Lila Abu-Lughod, Nina Berman, Rema Hammami, Sima Shakhsari, Dina M. Siddiqi, and Shenila Khoja-Moolji. It addresses the core question: "What happens when a visionary feminist project is integrated into contemporary world affairs?"
Please click the link here to watch the video recording of this book launch, or click the Video tab in the Header under Media.
The video is also available on our YouTube channel, accessible here.
Lila Abu-Lughod Delivers Keynote Address | Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence
Former co-director of the Religion and Global Framing of Gender Violence working group, Lila Abu-Lughod, will be presenting with Rema Hammami and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian on their forthcoming book with Duke University Press. Friday, February 25, 2022, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Virtual Event. Registration required.
https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/events/2022/gender-violence-geopolitics-and-feminism
Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence | Article in 50th Anniversary Special Issue of Feminist Studies
Former CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence published an article about their project in the 50th Anniversary Special Issue of Feminist Studies. Read it here.
"The Cunning of Gender Violence: Geopolitics and Feminism" Available for Preorder
Former CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence's book, The Cunning of Gender Violence: Geopolitics and Feminism, is available for preorder! Use code SPRING23 for 50% until April 1, 2023.
A Message from the Staff of CSSD: Solidarity with Palestine
Our core mission at CSSD is to create the conditions for understanding and being able to challenge inequality and oppression in all its forms. We understand all forms of oppression are interconnected and so our commitment to solidarity with Palestinians is rooted in our commitment to imagining racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice globally.
A Message from the Staff of CSSD: Solidarity with Palestine
We, the undersigned at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We support their right to resist Israel's ethnic cleansing and to seek justice and their rights in the face of racist exclusion, dispossession of lands and homes, blockades and military violence by the Israeli state and its citizens.
One of our Palestinian colleagues and a long-time CSSD fellow has shared with us this important appeal from the Jerusalemite Women’s Coalition and we wanted to share it with you. A current pledge by scholars to support working and teaching about the Palestinian situation and rights has also been signed by many of those involved in CSSD’s projects.
Our core mission at CSSD is to create the conditions for understanding and being able to challenge inequality and oppression in all its forms. We understand all forms of oppression are interconnected and so our commitment to solidarity with Palestinians is rooted in our commitment to imagining racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice globally.
Paige West
Director
Catherine LaSota
Executive Director
Ayah Eldosougi
Program Coordinator
Fahmida Hussain
Business Officer
Updates from the Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence Working Group
Working group fellows have been busy writing critical work on the politics of gendered violence in fields ranging from Anthropology to Law and Public Policy.
Fellows from the working group on Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence have been busy writing critical work on the politics of gendered violence in fields ranging from Anthropology to Law and Public Policy. Although we have not been meeting in person, we wanted to keep the conversations going by sharing some of the Fellows’ recent scholarship and news.
Working Group Fellows
Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology and IRWGS, Columbia University, and RGFGV Project Co-Director, delivered the 2019 Inaugural Anthropology Lecture at the University of Leuven. Titled “The Courage of Truth: Making Anthropology Matter,” Professor Abu-Lughod explores Foucault’s call for the “courage of truth” to reflect on her recent work as a form of engaged anthropology, focusing on her work on gender violence and security and on the settler colonial paradigm in Palestinian studies. In 2019-20, Professor Abu-Lughod also delivered three lectures based on her work for the RGFGV project: the 21st Annual B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture at the Center for Developing Developing Societies in Delhi, India, titled “Gender, Violence, Security, Circuits of Power and the Muslim Question,” “Security and the Political Geographies of Gender Violence” in the NYU Liberal Studies Global Lecture Series, and a lecture at Amherst College.
Nadje Al-Ali, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University, co-edited a volume on Gender, Governance and Islam, to which she also contributed a chapter titled “Iraq: Gendering violence, sectarianisms and authoritarianism.” The Center for the Study of Social Difference co-sponsored the book launch, facilitated by Lila Abu-Lughod, with the editors of the volume. An interview with Deniz Kandiyoti, co-editor of Gender, Governance and Islam, can be found at Borderlines. Professor Al-Ali also published an article in Feminist Review on the challenges of discussing gender-based violence in relation to the Middle East, based on the paper she workshoped at our RGFGV confrence in New York. She co-wrote a chapter in Queer Asia (eds. Jonathan Daniel Luther and Jennifer Ung Loh) titled “Feminist and Queer Perspectives on West Asia.”
In 2019, Zahra Ali, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers, Newark, published an article for Contemporary Islam titled “Being a young British Iraqi Shii in London: exploring diasporic cultural and religious identities between Britain and Iraq.” Using ethnographic research conducted in London, Baghdad, and Najaf-Kufa, Professor Ali analyzes young British Iraqi Shiis experiences of belonging in relation to religious and cultural identities.
Qudsiya Contractor, Junior Fellow at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, contributed a chapter to Gender, Caste, and the Imagination of Equality, edited by Anupama Rao, titled “Muslim women, caste and the beef ban in Mumbai.” For Economic and Political Weekly, Dr. Contractor critiques recent Indian Supreme Court rulings on religious freedoms and women’s rights. She expanded on this work with an article for The Wire on the criminalization of the triple talaq, which examines the tensions between religious rights and Indian Supreme Court judgements in the pursuit of protecting women.
Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, co-edited Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field, and co-authored a chapter with Libby Adler titled “‘You Play, You Pay:’ Feminists and Child Support Enforcement in the United States.” Professor Halley was interviewed by the New York Times about the Trump administration rules on sexual misconduct on college campuses.
Rema Hammami, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Women’s Studies of Birzeit University and RGFGV Project Co-Director, contributed an article to Current Anthropology titled “Destabilizing Mastery and the Machine: Palestinian Agency and Gendered Embodiment at Israeli Military Checkpoints.” She also had a chapter in Janet Halley et. al.’s Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field (2019) entitled “Follow the Numbers: Global Governmentality and the Violence Against Women Agenda in Occupied Palestine.”
Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, published two articles. “Death by Benevolence: Third World Girl and the Contemporary Politics of Humanitarianism” in Feminist Theory, which examines the production of the “third world girl” through menstrual health and female genital mutilation campaigns. In “Re-animating Muslim women’s auto/biographical writings: Hayat-e-Ashraf as a palimpsest of educated selves,” published in Third World Thematics, Professor Khoja-Moolji resists dominant tropes of the 19th century Indian Muslim woman as silent and uneducated by re-purposing Muslim women’s auto/biographical writings from this time.
Vasuki Nesiah, legal scholar and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU Gallatin, contributed a chapter to Janet Halley et al’s edited volume of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field titled “Indebted: The Cruel Optimism of Leaning-In to Empowerment.” Professor Nesiah and Dina Siddiqi, RGFGV Fellow, were both panelists for the NYU Border Talks series that explored conceptual approaches to borders and mobility.
Rupal Oza, Associate Professor in the Department for Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, who presented at our RGFGV workshop in New York in October 2018 on her study of the increase in “false rape cases” with the National Crime Records Bureau in India, is published this as an article, “Sexual Subjectivity in Rape Narratives: Consent, Credibility, and Coercion in Rural Haryana” forthcoming in the Autumn 2020 issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Sima Shakhsari, RGFGV Fellow and Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, published a book in January 2020 called The Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan. The book investigates the online and off-line network of Iranian blogs, known as Weblogistan, and analyzes the politics of civil resistance, the internet as an imperial democratization project, and hegemonic impositions of gendered, sexed, and racial subjectivities. An interview with Professor Shakhsari, as well as an excerpt from their book, can be found on Jadaliyya.
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, RGFGV project co-director and Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Chair in Global Law at Queen Mary University of London, published a book, Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding in 2019. Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s award-winning book utilizes archival, historical, and ethnographic material to examine the governance of childhood under military occupation and violations of children’s rights in Palestine. More recently, Professor Shalhoub-Kervorkian also published “Gun to Body: Mental health against unchilding” in the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.
Dina Siddiqi, Clinical Associate Professor at NYU in Liberal Studies, penned an article for The Daily Star on labor organizing in the Bangladesh garment industry, and the historic tensions between trade unions and national interests. Along with RGFGV Fellow Vasuki Nesiah, Professor Siddiqi was a panelist for the NYU Border Talks series that explored conceptual approaches to borders and mobility. Professor Siddiqi was also interviewed in the Huffington Post about the Shaheen Bagh protests in opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act in India.
Aditi Surie von Czechowski, Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, wrote an article for Cultural Anthropology called “Together in the Flesh.” Dr. Surie von Czechowski draws on her fieldwork in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania to explore laughter as an embodied practice that “engenders togetherness in the flesh.”
Shahla Talebi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University, published an article in PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. In “Ethnography of Witnessing and Ethnography as Witnessing: Topographies of Two Court Hearings,” Professor Talebi draws on ethnographic and archival research to examine two hearings in Iranian courts involving the persecution of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s.
Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, and Faculty Director of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California Berkeley,published “Protecting the Nation from ‘Honor Killings:’ the Construction of a Problem” for Constitutional Commentary.
Dubravka Zarkov, Associate Researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen and co-editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies recently wrote an editorial titled, “On economy, health, and politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic” for the upcoming issue of the European Journal of Women’s Studies. Professor Zarkov also published an editorial on contemporary dissonance within global feminist movements, and an editorial on reading contemporary news stories as fairy tales, utopias, or critical dystopias.
Media Fellows
In 2018 and 2019, recipients of the CSSD media fellowship were supported to travel to the Middle East or South Asia to research stories that could reframe perspectives on the relationships between gender-based violence and religion. Since then, the fellows have published a range of editorials and articles.
Yasmin El-Rifae, an editor at Mada Masr and co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature, published a piece on the high rates of cesarean section births in Egypt. This article looks into the political and economic factors within the healthcare industry that contribute to the rise of c-sections, and uses personal testimony of women presented with the choice of a cesarean section.
Rafia Zakaria, author of Against White Feminism (2017) and The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015), wrote an analysis for Adi Magazine on the ways in which American anti-FGM (female genital mutilation) campaigns are harnessed to justify the legal exclusion of Black and brown people through ICE operations and executive orders. She wrote a New York Times book review of Hossein Kamaly’s new book, A History of Islam in 21 Women, as well as an article for The Nation on the dangers of “stay-at-home” orders for survivors of domestic violence.
Samira Shackle published an article in Elle UK detailing harassment and blackmail faced by Pakistani women online. The article outlines the limitations to global privacy standards on social media platforms, and the consequences that women may experience for reporting cybercrimes.
Maryam Saleh, a reporter with The Intercept, penned an article on the ways in which war and displacement have cultivated new circumstances for Syrian women to address patriarchy and sexual violence in innovative ways. On Their Own Terms investigates the onset of humanitarian programs that arose as a result of Syria’s ongoing conflict, and the ways in which they fulfill, or brush up against, the demands of Syrian women who are pushing for deeper political change.
Lila Abu-Lughod cited by the New York Times Book Review
The former Reframing Gendered Violence co-director’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving? was referenced in a review of a new book on 21 Women Across the History of Islam.
Lila Abu-Lughod, former co-director of the Reframing Gendered Violence working group, had her work Do Muslim Women Need Saving cited in a New York Times book review of Hossein Kamaly’s new book A History of Islam in 21 Women.
Lila Abu-Lughod Gives B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture
The lecture, entitled “Gender, Violence, Security,” took place on November 1.
This past week Lila Abu-Lughod delivered the twenty-first B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture, a series instituted in memory of economist Professor B.N. Ganguli. The lecture, entitled “Gender, Violence, Security,” took place at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi.
Lila Abu-Lughod is co-director of Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence, and of Reframing Gendered Violence. She is also a member of CSSD’s current Executive Committee.
Read more about her recent lecture here.
Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence (RGFGV) convene major international workshop
CSSD working group RGFGV hosts twenty-five scholars, journalists, lawyers and activists for a two day intensive workshop of collaborative research sharing and brainstorming at Columbia University in New York City
On September 7 and 8 2018, CSSD working group Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence (RGFGV) convened the Global Governance of the Intimate conference, a major international workshop. This conference was the second in a series of international workshops that opened with workshop in Amman a year earlier, hosted at the Columbia Global Center | Middle East, Amman.
Participants and organizers who had presented at the Amman workshop opened the first session with an overview of how the three conceptual domains that had organized the earlier work of the project intersected with the new scholarship being presented.
Click here to read the full conference report.
Video from the conference is available here.
The RGFGV project seeks to track and analyze the growing prominence of the global agenda against “violence against women” (VAW) and “gender-based violence” (GBV), whether in international law and global governance, practical interventions, or international media coverage.
The RGFGV project is supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and is co-directed by Lila Abu-Lughod, Rema Hammami, Janet Jakobsen and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.
RGFGV Co-director Delivers Lecture at the University of Alberta
Professor Lila Abu-Lughod delivers lecture for distinguished series on human rights at the University of Alberta
On February 4, former CSSD director and co-director of Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence (RGFGV) working group, Professor Lila Abu-Lughod delivered a lecture at the University of Alberta Visiting Lectureship in Human Rights series. Professor Abu-Lughod's talk entitled, "Is the War on Muslims a War on Rights?” questions the use of military invasions in the name of defending Muslim women’s rights and how proliferating security measures for surveillance and management of Muslims in the name of protecting human life have confronted those who value the ideals of human rights with troubling questions.
Lila Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University where she teaches anthropology and gender studies. A leading voice in the debates about culture, gender, Islam, and global feminist politics, her award-winning books and articles have been translated into 14 languages.
The University of Alberta Visiting Lectureship in Human Rights is envisioned as one of the preeminent annual events held at the University. Individuals or organizations that have made an outstanding contribution in the field of human rights and human rights protection are invited to deliver a major public lecture in Edmonton.
RGFGV Media Fellow Published on Elle.com
Samira Shackle writes article discussing the blackmail of Pakistani women on Facebook.
Samira Shackle, Media Fellow for the CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, published an article in Elle UK online detailing increasing harassment and blackmail faced by Pakistani women on Facebook.
The article highlights the growing number of cases of abusive ex-partners who post photos of their non-marital relationships on social media, an act that can cause serious problems for women in Pakistan, including suicide.
Click here to read the article.
Samira Shackle is one of three Media Fellows awarded reporting grants by CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence in September 2017. After participating in an international workshop with scholars and activists hosted at the Columbia Global Center in Amman, the media fellows traveled to the Middle East to research stories that could reframe understandings of the relationship between gender violence and religion.
RGFGV Media Fellow Pens article for The Intercept
Maryam Saleh writes about the ways in which Syrian women in Turkey are redefining their independence.
Maryam Saleh, Media Fellow for CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, explores the tangible shift many Syrian women living in Turkey have experienced over the last seven years. As a result of the ongoing conflict in Syria which began in 2011, many Syrian women have found themselves having unexpectedly frank conversations about the political and cultural forces that have stymied their growth. Saleh’s article uncovers how women have been able to renegotiate their social standing and push back against patriarchal norms due to the various factors brought on by the war.
Click here to read more.
Maryam Saleh is a recipient of a media fellowship from CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence. After participating in an international workshop with scholars and activists hosted at the Columbia Global Center in Amman, the media fellows traveled to the Middle East to research stories that could reframe understandings of the relationship between gender violence and religion.
RGFGV Faculty Fellow Published on The Express Tribune
Dr. Shenilla Khoja-Moolji discusses the issue of sexual exploitation in the aid sector.
Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence faculty fellow Dr. Shenilla Khoja-Moolji discusses the culture of impunity that surrounds sexual violence and exploitation by foreign charities in developing countries. She draws parallels between the recent More Than Me scandal in Liberia and her home country of Pakistan to illustrate the prevalence of this issue, and provides recommendations on what must be done to prevent them from happening and ensure strict action is taken against perpetrators.
Click here to read more.
Dr. Shenilla Khoja-Moolji is a postdoctoral Fellow, in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research problematizes the centering of girls’ education and empowerment as a solution to societal problems, especially in relation to Muslim-majority nations.
Lila Abu-Lughod Reviews New Books on Palestinian Diaspora
Lila Abu-Lughod, co-director of CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, shares her thoughts on two new books in the publication Public Books.
Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science and co-director of CSSD working group Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, has shared a piece in the publication Public Books. In her contribution she reviews two books about being part of the Palestinian Diaspora. The piece is entitled, “Moods of Betrayal in the Story of Palestine,” and reviews the work of two Palestinian authors, Reja-e Busailah and Hala Alyan.
The full review of both books can be read here.
CSSD Fellow Yasmin El-Rifae discusses how the #MeToo movement can learn from the Egyptian revolution
Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence media fellow Yasmin El-Rifae publishes “What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo” in The Nation.
Yasmin El-Rifae, journalist and media fellow for the Center for the Study of Social Difference working group, Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, has been featured in The Nation with an article entitled “What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo.” In the article she shares her experience protecting women from sexual assault and discusses what the #MeToo movement can learn from feminists in other parts of the world. She writes, “...by separating out the struggles and experiences of Arab women we exclude them from the wider conversation and, in doing so, make their experiences less available and less useful to the rest of the world—most importantly, to women elsewhere who are thinking about similar problems.”
RGFGV announces second Media Fellowship Competition
CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence announces its second Media Fellowship Competition.
CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence announces its second Media Fellowship Competition. The second of two reporting grants hosted by the project, this cycle will focus on South Asia. Previous Media Fellows were: Yasmin el Rifae, Nafeesa Syeed, and Samira Shackle.
The full announcement is available here.
RGFGV Media Fellows Yasmin El-Rifae and Samira Shackle Publish Articles on TheNation.com and ProspectMagazine.co.uk
CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence held an international competition and selected three Media Fellows to receive reporting grants. They joined the project, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, and did research in the Middle East to produce innovative media stories.
CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence held an international competition and selected three Media Fellows to receive reporting grants. They joined the project, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, and did research in the Middle East to produce innovative media stories.
Yasmin El-Rifae describes her experience with a volunteer feminist group resisting sexual violence that formed during the Egyptian Revolution. Her article ‘What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo’, highlights the way Egyptian activists are using self-organized, direct, and offensive tactics to fight sexual violence. In this era of the #MeToo movement, El-Rifae urges her readers to move towards a feminist praxis that creates global and systemic change and to look to Egyptian feminists for direction.
In her article ‘The Bureaucracy of Isis’, Samira Shackle looks at the dilemmas involved in the quest for restorative justice in Mosul post-ISIS. Focusing on the experience of refugee women, she reframes dominant narratives about religion and gender-based violence. Shackle’s interviews with family members of ISIS collaborators and victims of ISIS violence uncover how women suffer violence at the hands of family, the state, and ultimately how much human suffering has been created by imperialist interventions in Iraq.
RGFGV Media Fellow Nafeesa Syeed Publishes Article on Bloomberg.com
Nafeesa Syeed's article ‘Women Flee a Hellscape in Yemen. Here are Their Lives Now’, highlights the way refugee women are using entrepreneurship to adapt to their new realities.
CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence held an international competition and selected three Media Fellows to receive reporting grants. They joined the project, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, and did research in the Middle East to produce innovative media stories.
Nafeesa Syeed focuses on the struggles and achievements of Yemeni women in the midst of US and Saudi-led war campaigns. Through interviews with Djibouti-based Yemeni women living in refugee camps and active young Yemeni women in Amman, Jordan, she shows how women are framing their experiences of violence and war and assessing their changing social roles. Her article ‘Women Flee a Hellscape in Yemen. Here are Their Lives Now’, highlights the way refugee women are using entrepreneurship to adapt to their new realities.