Updated table of contents

Resistance and negotiation in the Digital Space

1.    Inquiries on the Periphery: Contemporary Forms of Muslim Women’s Activism within a Post-Modern Context
Helena Zeweri (Femin Ijtihad, New York)

2. Muslim Women’s Online Narratives
Danielle Saad (Texas Tech University, Lubbock)

3.    Let’s Talk about Sex: Australian Online Discussions of Muslim Female Sexuality
Roxanne Marcotte (The University of Queensland)

4.    Sexuality, Difference and American Hijabi Bloggers
Rebecca Robinson (Arizona State University)


Education

5.    Muslim Women in Hyderabad and Digital Storytelling
Ioana Literat (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

6.    Interpreting Religion, Enacting Parenthood, Taming Technology –  Indonesian Muslim mothers’ supervision of children’s internet use
Rahayu and Sun Sun Lim (National University of Singapore)

7.    Al-Huda International: (how) Muslim Women Empower Themselves through Study of the Qur’an
Usha Sanyal (Queens University of Charlotte)


Art

3.    “I Have a Voice”:  Despatialization, Multiple Alterities, and the Digital Performance of Jabala Women of Northern Morocco
Maria Curtis (University of Houston-Clear Lake)

4.    A Cyber Ummah: Muslim Women’s Arts Associations Online
Valérie Behiery (University of Montreal)


Converts

8.    Female converts from Greek Orthodoxy to Islam and their digital religious identity
Alexandros Sakellariou  (Panteion University, Athens)

9.    Getting beyond ethnic and religious homogeneity: being a female Muslim convert in Poland
Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska (University of Warsaw)

10.    The role of the Internet in dress choices among native-born converts to Islam in North America
Heather Akou (Indiana University Bloomington)

Provisional table of contents

Political Activism

1.    Inquiries on the Periphery: Contemporary Forms of Muslim Women’s Activism within a Post-Modern Context
Natasha Latiff and Helena Zeweri (Femin Ijtihad, New York)

2.    Neoliberalism in an Increasing Digital Political Age: The Case of Jordan and Queen Rania
Sarah K. Meyrick (New York University)

3.    Women’s Cyber Activism in Iran
Samaneh Oladi (University of California Santa Barbara)

4.    Gender Activism in Islamist Movements in Morocco
Merieme Yafout (University of Hassan II, Casablanca)

Art

5.    “I Have a Voice”:  Despatialization, Multiple Alterities, and the Digital Performance of Jabala Women of Northern Morocco
Maria Curtis (University of Houston-Clear Lake)

6.    A Cyber Ummah: Muslim Women’s Arts Associations Online
Valérie Behiery (University of Montreal)

7.    Muslim Women’s Online Photographic and Video Self-Representations as a Counter-Discourse
Anna Piela (University of Westminster, London)

Education

8.    Muslim women leveraging Private university Online/Offline space for a Public cause: A Saudi Arabia Case Study
Payal Arora (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) and Leigh Llewelyn Graham (Columbia University, New York)

9.    (TBC) E-Learning and educational opportunities for Muslim women: A review of the e-learning landscape in higher education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Denise Wood (University of South Australia, Adelaide) and Shatha Makki (The National Centre for E-Learning and Distance Learning, Riyadh)

10.    Muslim Women in Hyderabad and Digital Storytelling
Ioana Literat (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

11.    Interpreting Religion, Enacting Parenthood, Taming Technology –  Indonesian Muslim mothers’ supervision of children’s internet use
Rahayu and Sun Sun Lim (National University of Singapore)

12.    Al-Huda International: (how) Muslim Women Empower Themselves through Study of the Qur’an
Usha Sanyal (Queens University of Charlotte)


Digital and Religious Identities

13.    Exploring media, politics, place and identity for young Muslim women in Bristol
Imogen Wallace (Queen Mary, University of London)

14.    Identities and personae performed in Muslim women's blogs
Shabana Mir (Oklahoma State University)

15.   Of CyberMuslimahs: Wives of the Prophet and Muslim Women in the Digital Age
Ruqayya Yasmine Khan (Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas)

16.    Nationalist, Muslim and Islamist women bloggers in Egypt
Fatma Emam (Nazra for Feminist Studies, Cairo)

Converts

17.    Female converts from Greek Orthodoxy to Islam and their digital religious identity
Alexandros Sakellariou  (Panteion University, Athens)

18.    Getting beyond ethnic and religious homogeneity: being a female Muslim convert in Poland
Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska (University of Warsaw)

19.    The role of the Internet in dress choices among native-born converts to Islam in North America
Heather Akou (Indiana University Bloomington)

20.    Brazilian Muslim women as bloggers: Islamic knowledge, religious activism, and gender dynamics in digital contexts
Gisele Fonseca Chagas (The Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro)

Resistance and negotiation

21.    Let’s Talk about Sex: Australian Online Discussions of Muslim Female Sexuality
Roxanne Marcotte (The University of Queensland)

22.    Sexuality, Difference and American Hijabi Bloggers
Rebecca Robinson (Arizona State University)

23.    Muslim Women’s Online Narratives 
Danielle Saad (Texas Tech University, Lubbock)

24.    Muslim Women: Active Online Preachers- Interreligious Dialoguers
Maha Youssuf (Independent Writer and Blogger, Egypt)

Deadline for submissions closed

A few days ago the deadline for submissions for the edited volume Muslim Women Digital Geographies closed. At the moment the number of chapters stands at 23, grouped into six provisional sections: 'Political Activism', 'Art', 'Education', 'Identity', 'Converts' and 'Resistance and Negotiation'. Geographically speaking, the geographical areas discussed by the contributors include Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UK and the US. It is doubtlessly an advantage of this book that it will shed some light on the Muslim presence in countries where it has largely passed unnoticed.
The volume is hopefully going to be published by Brill (Women and Gender: The Middle East and the Islamic World series), who are interested in the project and providing editorial support.

The Call For Chapters (deadline closed)

The collection Muslim Women's Digital Geographies aims to bring together research on Muslim women's diverse activity on the Internet that may span personal writing, debates in discussion groups, political activism, networking and other forms of interaction with other people and audiences. The collection is interdisciplinary, and includes perspectives from all disciplines, including Islamic studies, media studies, social sciences, technology studies, gender studies, fashion studies, linguistics, art, and politics.

Scholarship on Muslim women in the recent years has extensively focused on the Islamic dress-code as the main signifier of faith. However, there are many other, under-researched aspects of Muslim women’s lives, including their use of new technologies for religious purposes. Most notably, Muslim women use the Internet as a platform for creation of gender-specific understanding of Islamic scriptures. These alternative readings question the validity of patriarchal, mainstream interpretations that have shaped lives of generations of Muslim women who have long challenged them from within academia and women's organizations (see Wadud, 2001; Barlas, 2006) and locally, in ‘face-to-face’ grassroots contexts such as women’s organisations and mosque study circles (see Afshar, 1998; Mahmood, 2005; Badran, 2006; Bhimji, 2009).

The Internet is increasingly seen as a facilitator of such interpretive practices that can now be conducted through collaboration of Muslim women from different geographic and cultural locations. This geographic and cultural diversity is likely to have an impact in terms of originality of the scriptural readings, as such Internet-based interpretations have the potential to be much more inclusive than previous, localised understandings of Islam. This is particularly important for grassroots women who have been largely
excluded from decision-making in Islamic religious structures in spite of the rise of Islamic feminism. As a result, the Internet is perceived by some Muslim women as a platform enabling them to create and publish their interpretations of the Qur’an and the Hadith to many audiences.

The collection Muslim Women’s Digital Geographies retains a focus on intersections of the Islamic faith and technology. Exploration of different ways in which Muslim women employ new technologies, in particular the Internet, to develop and emphasise their identity and agency as Muslim women (especially in the context of stereotypical media representations of Islam in the West) will contribute to more complex and sophisticated
understanding of their lives and experiences.