Geographies of Muslim Women

This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of Muslim woman, so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

Geographies of Muslim Women is a timely and significant intervention that is destined to become a landmark in feminist conversations in and beyond geography. In the post-9/11 geopolitical context, when we are bombarded with dangerous caricatures of Islam and everything 'Muslim,' this outstanding volume provides us with desperately needed tools to engage, ground, and extend critical questions of representation, difference, political action, and space.--Richa Nagar, Department of Women’s Studies, University of MinnesotaThis volume's contributions are original and diverse in terms of region, geographic scale, topical focus, historical period, and methodology, affording the reader insight into the complexity and wide variation among women's lives in the Muslim world--which is today the entire world. This is an engaging book and one I recommend to anyone interested in gender, development, Islam, or geography. It will be an especially rich text from which to teach. Senior undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars--geographers and nongeographers alike--will find this book invaluable.--Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Geography and Women's Studies Programs, University of Nebraska at OmahaThis collection has everything! It sets a high standard for contemporary geographical theory, original research, and innovative methodologies. It is a timely treatment of one of the least understood and most important topics in today’s world, as it busts cultural myths, challenges stereotypes, takes on moral issues, and provides a rich sense of everyday lives and landscapes. It will gain notice as the best that human geography has to offer.--Audrey Kobayashi, Department of Geography, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada - The collections manage to straddle a fine balance between drawing out 'Muslim woman' as a political category and the attendant risk of essentializing the diversity of women in Muslin societies, while at the same time presenting rich and contextualized accounts of the women's lives....This volume is an important contribution to debates beyond geography and cultural politics and will no doubt remain a landmark beyond the initial zeal of publications on Muslim women. It will appeal to readers with an interest in Muslims in non-majority Muslim countries where Islam is struggling to emerge as a heterogonous force against both U.S. influenced neo-conservatism and reactionary trends in religion and faith from different parts of the globe. --Cultural Geographies, 4/2/2005

Ghazi-Walid Falah is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Akron, Ohio, and is editor-in-chief of The Arab World Geographer. His major areas of research include the political, social, and cultural geography of the Middle East, with a special focus on Palestine. His current research centers on Arab-American bilateral relations from the perspective of media discourse. His publications include two books in Arabic--The Forgotten Palestinians (1989) and Galilee and Judaization Plans (1993)--as well as book chapters and numerous articles in such journals as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The Canadian Geographer,Transaction, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning A, The Professional Geographer, Area, and Third World Quarterly. Caroline Nagel is a lecturer in human geography at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. She received a PhD in 1998 from the University of Colorado, where she developed an interest in Arab and Muslim immigrant communities in Western countries. She is currently researching issues relating to citizenship and cultural identity among Arab Americans and British Arabs. She has a long-standing interest in theories of immigrant settlement and has published several scholarly articles on assimilation theory and immigrant transnationalism. She also has more general interests in urban geography and qualitative research methods.