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HDS 3629

The Female Body and Islam: Religious Doctrines in Changing Societies

Baber Johansen

Description

The Qur'an has developed rules of the gaze on men's and women's bodies. The ethical and legal rules of the Muslim \fiqh/ have developed a very different protocol of the gaze, partly under the influence of Greek optics. The visibility of God, of the ruler, of men and free or slave women are debated in great detail by the jurists and the exegetical literature of Islam. The concepts developed in these debates are anchored in the legal construction of social hierarchies, but also in the functions assigned to the cult, to domestic practices as well as to the public sphere. Each of these spheres has its particular and specific protocol of the gaze. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries important changes took place concerning the concepts of licit social hierarchies, women's place in public life and the isolation of the domestic against the public sphere. These changes have, on the one hand, given a public dimension to women's activities and on the other favored a new and simplified concept of women. In Islamist political movements they have contributed to the growing importance assigned to the female body as a symbol and a foundation of a clearly gendered religious order of society. The first part of the seminar will introduce general categories of classical Islamic thought on the visibility of the sacred, the political power and the shame zone of genders; the second part will analyze programs of religious and political movements but also the influence of changed concepts of the human body and gender for the concept of gendered social order.

Enrollment Limited: No
Open to BTI Students: Yes
Jointly offered through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Religion 1851

Scheduling

Half Course
Not Offered 2009-10
Course times to be announced.
Location to be announced.

Relationship to Program Requirements

Program Requirement	Area / Category / Art / Designation
MTS Area(s) of Focus	Islamic Studies Philosophy of Religion Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion
MDiv Distribution Category/ies	Islam
MDiv Art(s) of Ministry	none
ThM, pre-2007 MTS, and pre-2005 MDiv Area	Area 3
Language Course Designation(s)	n/a