This panel will examine how power is both claimed by and exercised upon Muslim women within the social and political space of the family. In her paper titled “Memoirs of Post-War Adolescent Bosnian Identity & Perseverance,” Sara Tufekci discusses the traumas and resilience in transnational women’s writing on the Bosnian War. She analyzes Kenan Trebinčević’s World In Between: Based on A True Refugee Story and Amra Sabic-El-Rayess’s The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival, arguing that family connections empower women to maintain their identity despite the boundaries of place and space. In conversation with Tufekci’s work, Ibtisam M. Abujad’s presentation will uncover how the colonial logics of racial capitalism oftentimes function through the exploitation of the Muslim family. Her paper dissects the contemporary Ramadan series Azmi wa Ashgan to illustrate how Ramadan series, in their targeting of Muslim families as consumers and in their centering of the family as a central character, can coopt Muslimness as a crafter of nationalist racial hierarchy through the sexual and economic exploitation of black bodies and labor.
Presenters:
Ibtisam M. Abujad, she/her, Graduate Student, Department of English, Marquette University
Sara Tufekci, Graduate Student, San Diego State University
Thank you for sharing your presentation! You made so many interesting connections between family, writing, and structures of power and privilege. I also enjoyed the conversation between the two of you at the end!
Thank you, dear Linnea, for your lovely comment!