Voice, Visibility and Velocity: Muslim women, past and present

With Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Arif Zaman and Baroness Uddin.

Muslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women’s bodies are veiled and voices silenced. Complicating these perceptions is Siobhan Lambert-Hurley’s new book, Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2018). The re-publication after 74 years of Iqbalunnisa Hussain’s Purdah and Polygamy: Life in an Indian Household (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a landmark being by many accounts the first novel written in English by a Muslim woman. Arif Zaman highlights it as an important contribution of women to the English language tradition in India and Pakistan and the continuing, crucial role of recovery and reprinting to feminist literary scholarship and its relevance across disciplines.

Baroness Uddin, the first Muslim woman in the House of Lords, one of the architects of Change the Script  shows how dynamic Muslim women are today providing an open space led by and for women to celebrate their rich cultural diversity and achievements too often overshadowed by the dominant narrative on extremism and the marginalisation of Muslim communities.

FREE – but pre-booking is recommended