In the face of rising Islamophobia in the West, how have diasporic women writers of Muslim background negotiated their migrant experience? The lecture will explore the different responses of diasporic women writers of Muslim backgrounds as they recast East/West binaries in the context of religion and cosmopolitan ideals. It will feature a comparative reading of Mohja Kahf, a Syrian-American poet, novelist, and critic, and Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian living in Paris and working in both graphic and cinematic forms.
About the presenter:
Susan Stanford Friedman is the Hilldale Professor of the Humanities and Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women’s Studies at UW-Madison. Recent books include Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time (2015), Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses (edited with Rita Felski), and Contemporary Revolutions: Turning Back to the Future in 21st-Century Literature and Art (2018). She is at work on Sisters of Scheherazade: Religion, Diaspora, Muslim Women’s Writing.
