2019: Feminist Approaches to Understanding Global Anti-Muslim Racism


Opening Reception: Race, Religion, and Coloniality

Dr. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian
Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law, Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Saree Makdisi
Professor, Department of English
and Comparative Literature, UCLA

Dr. Sherene Seikaly
, Associate Professor, Department of History,
UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Asli Ü. Bâli
Professor, School of Law, UCLA


Panel: Translations/Mistranslations

How does anti-Muslim racism travel transnationally and what kinds of mis/translations accompany its travels? How do local, national, and transnational scales and variant histories of (neo)imperialism, (post)colonialism, modernization, and nationalism inform these mis/translations? What are the uses and misuses of anti-Muslim racism as an academic concept as well as political strategy?

Dr. Zeynep Korkman, Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, UCLA

Paper Title: “Turkey Coopting the Critique: (Mis)Translations of Anti-Muslim Racism Discourse”

Dr. Saiba Varma, Assistant Professor, Psychological and Medical Anthropology, UC San Diego

Paper Title: “Injury, Militarized Care & Trauma Publics in Occupied Kashmir”

Dr. Elora Shehabuddin, Assistant Professor, Humanities and Political Science, the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Rice University

Paper Title: “BEFORE Muslims were Racialized: US-Pakistan Interactions in the Early Cold War Period”

Chair and discussant: Dr. Purnima Mankekar, Professor, Anthropology, UCLA


Panel: Race and Religion

In a number of places where Muslims encounter state violence as well as violence from individual actors, they are marked as racially subordinate. For example the figure of the Muslim as the quintessential non-Western, non-Christian Other occupies an important place in the contemporary white imaginary, and in the making of white national subjects in North America. Is a racial logic as readily discernable in contexts such as India, in movements against migrants in Europe? In Israel/Palestine? How does race come into operation through religion? How do Muslims matter when constructed as a race? What is at stake in the slippages between and the collapsing of, race and religion?

Dr. Minoo Moallem, Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, Director of Media Studies, UC Berkeley

Paper Title: “Race, Religion and Islamophobia”

Dr. Sherene Razack, Distinguished Professor, Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, UCLA

Paper Title: “They think it’s the Crusades all over again”: Islam and White Christian Aggrievement”

Dr. Sohail Daulatzai, Associate Professor, Departments of Film and Media Studies, African American Studies, and the Program in Global Middle East Studies, UC Irvine

Paper Title: “The Muslim International: an Anti-Colonial and Anti-Racist Collaboration”

Chair and discussant: Dr. Asma Sayeed, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Program Director of Islamic Studies, UCLA



Panel: Scales of Anti-Muslim Racism and Resistance

How do we forge solidarity and resistance at the face of anti-Muslim racism? What are the strategies demanded by different forms and scales of violence such from vigilante to state violence and from local to global levels?

Dr. Junaid Rana, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, EUI, and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois

Paper Title: “Racial Infrastructure”

Dr. Ali Behdad, Professor, John Charles Hillis Chair in Literature, Comparative Literature, UCLA

Paper Title: “Gender and Anti-Muslim Racism in France”

Dr. Fatima El-Tayeb, Professor, African-American Literature and Culture, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, UC San Diego

Paper Title: “(White) Feminist Anti-Muslim Racism in Western Europe”

Dr. Evelyn Alsultany, Associate Professor, American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California

Paper Title: “Muslims and Hate Crimes”

Chair and discussant: Dr. Sarah Gaultieri, Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, History and Middle East Studies, University of Southern California


Closing Plenary: New Directions in Research and Collaborations, a Round Table

Dr. Catherine Sameh, Assistant Professor,
Gender and Sexuality Studies, UC Irvine

Dr. Khanum Shaikh, Associate Professor,
Gender and Women’s Studies, CSUN

Dr. Azza Basarudin, Lecturer,
Gender and Women’s Studies, CSUN/ Gender Studies, UCLA

Dr. Sherine Hafez, Professor and Chair,
Gender & Sexuality Studies, UC Riverside

Moderator: Dr. Sondra Hale, Professor Emerita,
Anthropology and Women’s Studies, UCLA