WGS sponsors 'Women and Islam'

On Saturday, Women's History Month began at Johns Hopkins with a workshop sponsored by the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS). The day long workshop, "Women and Islam in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" featured female speakers from four different universities. It was cosponsored by the Center for Research on Culture and Literature, the Humanities Center and the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative American Cultures, English and History.

Ruby Lal, a professor in the Johns Hopkins History Department and the Associate Director of WGS, explained that the workshop was "complimentary to the...seminar program" for this year, the theme of which was "Rethinking the Family in the Context of Globalization." Lal said "The emphasis of the Women, Gender and Sexuality program has been towards diversity, especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11."

Speakers in the workshop's morning session discussed historical perspectives on Islam.

Kathryn Babayan, Assistant Professor of Iranian History and Culture at the University of Michigan, presented her paper entitled "Circumambulating the Ka'ba: An Iranian Woman's Journey Through Loss And Separation at the Turn of the 18th Century." The woman's journey was revealed through the recent rediscovery of a manuscript written in the late 1700s.

"My paper interprets a woman's journey through loss and separation based on a travelogue she herself records," said Babayan. She pointed out that "men pen the majority of extant sources" about women in the pre-modern Islamic world and "women remain on the margins of recorded premodern Islamic history." Babayan also discussed the "unattainable same-sex relationship" as a motivating factor in the recently widowed woman's voyage.

Following Babayan was Lal, whose area of expertise is 16th century India. Currently, she teaches a course in the history department on Women and Islam in the Modern World. In the past, Lal has taught The Imperial Harem.

Her presentation on Saturday was on "The Invention of the Haram: the Mughal Case." In her paper, Lal describes the haram as "a sequestered world, behind the wall, its women veiled...a highly sexualized, mysterious (hidden), domain of perverted, even orgiastic pleasure."

Her goal is to "document the encounter of a motley crowd of European travelers...with...the domestic world of the Mughals."

After a lunch break were two speakers who focused on contemporary perspectives of women and Islam. Shahla Haeri, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, presented "Sacred Canopy: Love and Sex Under the Veil." Haeri published Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi'i Iran, based on research she did in Iran, and she has previously written about women's rights. Haeri's paper focused on four papers in an attempt to "describe, in an ethnographic sense, what I see as the subliminal messages of desire and intimacy in Iranian movies."

The fourth and final speaker at the workshop was Margaret A. Mills, Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Culture at Ohio State University. Mills is known for her work with Persian folklore and gender. She spoke on "Gender and Critiques of Local Practice in Islam."

After Mills spoke, the film Mrs. President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran was shown.

Lal remarked on the turnout at the workshop and said that she had heard positive comments from students and faculty members who considered the event to be a "great success.