BOOK LAUNCH - Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion (Dreher and Ho) [19.03.2009]
BOOK LAUNCH
'Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion' Editors: Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho
To be launched by The Hon Dr Meredith Burgmann, City of Sydney Councillor
6 for 630pm, Wednesday 8 April Upstairs at The Loft (CB09), University of Technology Sydney entry via Broadway, Ultimo Map: http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/bway.html
DETAILS:
Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion Editors: Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho Date Of Publication: Feb 2009 Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0169-0 Isbn: 1-4438-0169-0
Headscarves in schools. Ethnic gang rapists. Domestic violence in Indigenous communities. Polygamy. Sharia law. It seems that in public debates around the world, concerns about marginalised communities often revolve around issues of gender and women’s rights. Yet all too often, discussions about complex matters are reduced to simplistic debates such as “hijab: to ban or not to ban?” or “Muslim women: oppressed or liberated?”.
This collection provides a space for in-depth analyses on the politics of gender, race and religion. As well as critical reflections on images and experiences of Muslim women, chapters also explore the relationships between gender, violence and protection, and offer innovative possibilities for intellectual and practical understandings at the intersection of gender, race and religion.
Essential reading for scholars and students of gender and women’s studies, cultural studies, racial and ethnic studies, religious studies and an educated public interested in understanding the challenges and possibilities of tackling both racism and the oppression of women.
Tanja Dreher is ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney and researches media and multiculturalism with a particular interest in changing journalism cultures, whiteness and gender. Her current project explores the productive possibilities of a politics of ‘listening’ to address some of the dilemmas of the more conventional politics of voice and representation.
Christina Ho is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. She researches migration, cultural diversity and gender. Her current projects examine sanctuary and security in Muslim women’s lives, cultural citizenship in Western Sydney, and models of community relations projects in Australia.
“Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho have intelligently and sensitively opened up a space for a number of authors who call on readers to develop a complex, but at the same time, simply human, appreciation of the intricate negotiations that Muslim women have to engage in to preserve the viability of their lives in a terrain rife with contradictions” – Ghassan Hage, author of White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society and Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society.