The Social Life of Muslim Women’s Human Rights

The Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Distinguished Lecture
The concept of “Muslim women’s rights” has an extraordinarily active social life these days. It circulates across continents. It travels in and out of classrooms and government policy offices; UN forums in New York and Geneva and local women’s organizations in places like Egypt, Malaysia, and Palestine; racy television soap operas and sober mosque study groups; popular novels recognizable by the veiled women stamped on their covers and innovative model marriage contracts developed by Muslim feminists seeking equity within the religious tradition. What do we make of this intense concern with “Muslim women’s rights” and what do we make of its promiscuous travels? “Women’s rights” mean different things to women living complicated lives in villages and urban lawyers drawing seamlessly on the authority of CEDAW. What can we learn from tracking “rights talk,” as an anthropologist would, into everyday lives?

Lila Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

The event is sponsored by the Journal for Middle East Women’s Studies, the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies, UCSB Department of Feminist Studies, UCSB Department of History, the UCSB Divisions of Social Sciences and Humanities, the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, the UCLA Department of Women’s Studies, and the UCLA Dean of Social Sciences.

For more information contact Laura Pollick (telephone 893-4245).

jwil 08.ii.2009