The coursework essays are intended not only to encourage greater reflection on the issues and problems of the readings, but also to help you develop effective writing and analytic skills.
Substantive expectations
1. You must demonstrate that you understand the main analytical and ethnographic issues which are the subject of your essay. (These essays do not necessarily reflect the literature referred to on the reading list.) When referring to a particular work, one indication of such understanding is to restate the author’s ideas as they come up in your own argument, rather than devoting a lengthy section of your essay to summary. Another indication is that the textual material you quote actually supports the specific claim you are making.
2. You will be asked to construct an argument, to define an assertion or position and to marshal evidence from appropriate texts to substantiate your claims. The argument needs to be stated clearly at the beginning and then developed coherently and consistently throughout the essay. Remember your essay has to be read and understood by others. In order to make your essay into a coherent whole you should:
A. Start with an introduction, which clearly and succinctly states the problem and/or what position you will be arguing for or against. Indicate how you are going to address the topic (i.e., how you are going to go about constructing an argument).
B. Then move on to the main body of the essay in which you defend and support you position by using specific examples to construct an argument. The evidence presented in the body of the essay should lead toward and help make your argument. Keep your argument clearly in focus and make sure to be explicit on how your points logically connect together to construct an argument.
C. And end with a conclusion in which you briefly restate your case and emphasize the main points that you have made to support your position along the way. Be sure to be clear in the conclusion where you stand on the essay question
Other Collections and References:
Soraya Altorki & Camillia Fawzi El-Solh (eds.), Arab Women in the Field,1988 #
Edmund Burke, III (ed.), Struggle & Survival in the Modern Middle East,1993 #
Dale Eickelman & James Piscatori (eds.), Muslim Travellers,1990#
Encyclopedia of Islam (in the Reading Room), for reference.
Camillia Fawzi El-Solh & Judith Mabro (eds.), Muslim Women’s Choices, Berg 1993 #
D. Gerner (ed), Understanding the contemporary Middle East, 2000
Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam and the State,1991#
— (ed.), Gendering the Middle East,1995#
Nikki Keddie and Beth Baron (eds.), Women in Middle Eastern History, 1991#
T. Saliba et al., Gender, Politics, and Islam, 2002 #
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Referencing Requirements:
Week 5 Religion and Gender in the Public Sphere
Class Readings:
Y. Rapoport, Marriage, money and divorce in medieval Islamic society. Cambridge UP 2005 (chap.4)
E. Semerdjian, Sinful professions: Illegal occupations of women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria. Hawwa 2003, 1 (1): 60-85.
Supplementary readings:
Z. Mir-Hosseini,Z. Marriage on Trial. A Study of Islamic Family Law, London: I.B. Tauris 1993,
esp. chaps 1 & 2
Z. Mir-Hosseini, Stretching the limits: A feminist reading of the Shari’ah in post-Khomeini Iran, In M.Yamani (ed.) Feminism & Islam—2003. Women’s rights and clerical discourse. In N. Nabavi (ed.), Intellectual Trends in 20th Century Iran: A Critical Survey. University Press of Florida.
Mir – Hosseini, “Women, marriage and the law in post-revolutionary Iran”, In H.Afshar (ed.) Women in the Middle East, London: Macmillan
—-Women and politics in post-Khomeini Iran: Divorce, veiling and emerging feminist voices, In H.Afshar (ed) Women & Politics in the Third World, London 1996, chap 9
—-Negotiating the politics of gender in Iran: An ethnography of a documentary. In R.Tapper (ed.), The new Iranian cinema, London: I.B.Tauris 2002
—-Islam and Gender: The religious debate in contemporary Iran, Princeton UP 1999
M. Yamani, Polygamy and law in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Ithaca Press 2008
H.Moghissi, Women and fundamentalism in Iran. In R.Lentin (ed.) Gender and Catastrophe. 1997
J. Tucker, In the House of the Law, University of California Press 1998, chap 3
L. Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, 2003
N. Nassar, Legal plurality: Reflection on the status of women in Egypt. In Baudouin, Dupret et al. (eds), Legal pluralism in the Arab world, 1999
A. Würth, The family and the ability to negotiate. Islamic Law and Society 1995,2(3)
S. Hirsch, Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court, Chicago UP, 1998
S. Hirsch, Kadhi’s courts as complex sites of resistance: The state, Islam, and gender in postcolonial Kenya. In M.Lazarus-Black and S.Hirsch (eds), Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance, 1994
D. Dwyer, Law actual and perceived: the sexual politics of law in Morocco. Law & Society Review 1979, 13(3): 740-56
—Law and Islam in the Middle East. New York: Bergin & Garvey 1990
D. Singerman, Rewriting divorce in Egypt: reclaiming Islam, legal activism, and coalition politics. In R. Hefner, ed. Remaking Muslim politics. Princeton Univ. Press 2005 (chap. 7).
M. Al-Sharmani, Egyptian family courts: a pathway of women’s empowerment? HAWWA 2009, 7(2): 89-110.
W. Hallaq, An introduction to Islamic law, Cambridge 2009 (esp. Pt II).
Week 7 Textual Authority and the Power of the Law
B. Messick, The Mufti, the text and the world: Legal interpretation in Yemen, Man 1986:102-19
E. Shehabuddin, Contesting the illicit: Gender and the politics of fatwas in Bangladesh, Signs 1999, 24(4):1011-1044 (reprinted in T. Saliba et al., Gender, Politics, & Islam, 2002)
Class readings:
Y.Haddad, Operation desert storm and the war of fatwas. In M.Masud, B.Messick, and D.Powers, eds., Islamic legal interpretation: Muftis and their fatwas. Harvard University Press, 1996.
K.Bälz, Submitting faith to judicial scrutiny through the family trial: The “Abu Zayd case”. Die Welt des Islams 1997, 37(2): 135-55
Supplementary Readings:
Dossier on Fatwa in Bangladesh (a series of articles, background to the article by Shehabbudin) Interventions 2002 4(2):212-44.
J.Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian state. Leiden: Brill 1997
B. Johansen, Apostasy as objective and depersonalised fact: two recent Egyptian court judgments. Social Research 2003, 70(3):687-710
D. Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a 20th Century Notable. 1985, pp.37-55, 57-71.
J.Bowen, Qur’an, justice, gender: Internal debates in Indonesian Islamic jurisprudence. History of Religions, 1998, 38(1)
J.Bowen, Legal reasoning and public discourse in Indonesian Islam, In D.Eickelman and
J. Anderson (eds.) New Media in the Muslim World, 1999
—Muslims Through Discourse. Princeton
R. Antoun, Muslim Preacher in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective, 1989, chap.5
M. Masud, B. Messick and Powers (eds.) Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas. Harvard UP 1996
S.Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic world, London: I.B. Tauris 2003
D.Edwards, Print Islam: Media and religious revolution in Afghanistan, Anthropological Quarterly, Special Issue: Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts 1995, 68
B.Messick, The calligraphic state, California UP 1995, chap 1,7,8
S.Rosiny, ‘The tragedy of Fatima al-Zahra’ in the debate of two Shiite theologians in Lebanon, in R. Brunner and W. Ende (eds.) The Twelver Shia in Modern Times: Religious Culture and Political History, Leiden: Brill 2000
M. Fischer, Legal Postulates in flux: Justice, wit, and hierarchy in Iran, In D. Dwyer (ed) Law and Islam in the Middle East, 1990
M. Sanadjian, A public flogging in south-western Iran, in O. Harris (ed.), Inside and Outside the L
