Gender in Muslim Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Annotation

Gender in Muslim Eastern Europe and Central Asia

AVES00984, 6 credits, winter semester 2021/22

Lecturer: Andreja Mesarič, PhD

Email: [e-mail]

Time: Mondays, 14:10 – 15:50

Location: Room 325

Office hours: by appointment

Course Description

The course examines the role of gender in Muslim religious practices as well as in political contestations over the definition of Islam in contemporary Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It explores how post-socialist transformation has affected Islamic religious authority, political discourses on Islam, and the lived reality of Muslims as gendered subjects. It also offers a historical discussion of state intervention into the lives of Muslim communities focussing on the 20th century. The geographical focus of the course is on the Balkans, Russia and the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, however it also considers Ukraine, the Caucasus and East-Central Europe. Through the course students will learn to:

• Understand commonalities, differences and connections between Muslims in different regions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and how they were shaped

• Understand how religious practice and government responses to it are mediated by gender

• Learn to think critically about boundary making and othering

• Recognise Islam as integral rather than external to Eastern Europe

• Apply a postcolonial and decolonial lens to Islam in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Course Requirements and Grading

The grade will be based on:

-20% class attendance and participation

-80% final exam (for BA students)

-80% final essay (for MA students)

Participation: You are expected to prepare for each class by reading the assigned articles or book chapters (1-2 per class). You are expected to share your critical evaluation of the readings in class discussions. This includes reflecting on the following questions:

• What argument(s) is the author making?

• What evidence does the author present to back up the argument(s)?

• Do you agree or disagree with the argument(s) and why?

• What is the paper aiming to achieve?

• How does it expand our knowledge of gender and Islam in the region?

• How does it relate to the rest of the literature we have discussed?

Exam: BA students are required to pass a written exam asking them to reflect on a series of questions related to the course material. Details of what the exam will look like will be discussed in class toward the end of the semester.

Essay: MA students are required to write an essay on a topic related to the content of the course in the length of 2500 - 3000 words. You will be able to choose from a selection of topics offered by the course coordinator. You can also propose your own topic related to the content of the course, however, this will need to be approved by the course coordinator. In your essay you are expected to engage with a minimum of 10 books or articles from the weekly course readings and additional recommended literature list. The final essay will be due in January 2022 (exact date to be confirmed).

Weekly schedule

Week 1: Introduction to the course - topics and concepts

Week 2: Rethinking indigeneity of Muslims in Eastern Europe

Week 3: Muslim encounters with modernity and reformist views on gender, early 20th cent.

Week 4: Communist gender reform - the case of Soviet Central Asia and Yugoslavia

Week 5: Muslim religious practice during communism

Week 7: Islamic revival between piety and political co-optation

Week 8: Religion and post-communist transformation of gender relations

Week 9: Pious women’s engagement with Islamic learning and religious authority

Week 10: Securitisation of Islam and the discourse of traditional Islam

Week 11: Non-normative gender identities and sexualities

Week 12: Localised forms of Orientalism and Islamophobia

Reading list

Abu-Lughod, Lila, ed. Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East. Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New ed., n.d.

Ballinger, Pamela, and Kristen Ghodsee. ‘Socialist Secularism: Religion, Modernity, and Muslim Women’s Emancipation in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1945-1991’. Aspasia 5, no. 1 (1 January 2011): 6–27. https://doi.org/10.3167/asp.2011.050103.

Blumi, Isa. ‘Defining Social Spaces by Way of Deletion: The Untold Story of Albanian Migration in the Postwar Period’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29, no. 6 (November 2003): 949–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183032000171311.

Bringa, Tone. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Brower, Daniel R. Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire. London ; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.

Clayer, Nathalie. ‘Behind the Veil: The Reform of Islam in Inter-War Albania or the Search for a “Modern” and “European” Islam’. In Islam in Inter-War Europe, edited by Clayer, Nathalie and Eric Germain, 128–55. London: Hurst, 2008.

Di Puppo, Lili. ‘The Paradoxes of a Localised Islamic Orthodoxy: Rethinking Tatar Traditional Islam in Russia’. Ethnicities 19, no. 2 (April 2019): 311–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796819828754.

Edgar, Adrienne Lynn. ‘Emancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under Soviet Rule, 1924-29’. Russian Review 62, no. 1 (January 2003): 132–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9434.00267.

Edgar, Adrienne. ‘Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation: The Soviet “Emancipation” of Muslim Women in Pan-Islamic Perspective’. Slavic Review 65, no. 2 (2006): 252–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/4148592.

Eminov, Ali. ‘Turks and Tatars in Bulgaria and the Balkans’. Nationalities Papers 28, no. 1 (March 2000): 129–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905990050002489.

Ghodsee, Kristen. Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Giomi, Fabio. ‘Muslim, Educated and Well-Dressed: Gajret’s Self-Civilizing Mission in Interwar Yugoslavia’. European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire 26, no. 1 (2 January 2019): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2018.1471044.

Gradskova, Yulia. Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Woman. New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2018.

Hadžiristić, Tea. ‘Unveiling Muslim Women in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Body between Socialism, Secularism, and Colonialism’. Religion and Gender 7, no. 2 (19 February 2017): 184–203. https://doi.org/10.18352/rg.10137.

Helms, Elissa. ‘East and West Kiss: Gender, Orientalism, and Balkanism in Muslim-Majority Bosnia-Herzegovina’. Slavic Review 67, no. 1 (2008): 88–119. https://doi.org/10.2307/27652770.

Heyat, Farideh. ‘Re-Islamisation in Kyrgyzstan: Gender, New Poverty and the Moral Dimension’. Central Asian Survey 23, no. 3–4 (December 2004): 275–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/0263493042000321371.

Heyat, Farideh. Azeri Women in Transition: Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Central Asia Research Forum. London ; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.

Jersild, Austin. Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1845 - 1917. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2002.

Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

Kamp, Marianne. The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling under Communism. Jackson School Publications in International Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

Kandiyoti, Deniz, and Nadira Azimova. ‘The Communal and the Sacred: Women’s Worlds of Ritual in Uzbekistan’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10, no. 2 (June 2004): 327–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2004.00192.x.

Kandiyoti, Deniz. ‘The Politics of Gender and the Soviet Paradox: Neither Colonized, nor Modern?’ Central Asian Survey 26, no. 4 (December 2007): 601–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634930802018521.

Karimova, Liliya. ‘Muslim Revival in Tatarstan’. Nova Religio 17, no. 1 (1 August 2013): 38–58. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2013.17.1.38.

Keller, Shoshana. ‘Trapped between State and Society: Women’s Liberation and Islam in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1926-1941’. Journal of Women’s History 10, no. 1 (1998): 20–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0552.

Khalid, Adeeb. ‘Backwardness and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet Central Asia in Comparative Perspective’. Slavic Review 65, no. 2 (2006): 231–51. https://doi.org/10.2307/4148591.

Merdjanova, Ina. Rediscovering the Umma: Muslims in the Balkans between Nationalism and Transnationalism - Chapter 3: Islam and Women in the Balkans. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Merrell, David E. ‘Islam and Dispute Resolution in Central Asia: The Case of Women Muslim Leaders’. New Middle Eastern Studies 1 (15 June 2011). https://doi.org/10.29311/nmes.v1i0.2604.

Mesarič, Andreja. ‘“Islamic Cafés” and “Sharia Dating:” Muslim Youth, Spaces of Sociability, and Partner Relationships in Bosnia-Herzegovina’. Nationalities Papers 45, no. 4 (July 2017): 581–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2017.1298579.

Michaels, Paula A. Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh, Pa: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.

Minkov, Anton. Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahası Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730. The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, v. 30. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2004.

Mirkova, Anna M. ‘The Past, Present, and Future of the Muslim Millet: Discourses of Modern