Religions and Religious authorities have long held control over the rights and rituals of the body from birth to death and in between. This course is about how Muslims have constructed medical ethics discourses, what are the major ethical problems that arise for Muslims seeking medical care, and how Muslims have managed religious and medical knowledge in healthcare decision making. Muslim Medical ethics is a story about gender, sexuality, race, religious authority, moral responsibility, God, colonialism, the state, capitalism, science and the practice of medicine. We will make critical study of all of these as we move from pre-modern to contemporary discourses and cover a variety of medical ethics issues in cases of reproductive health, abortion, organ transplantation, mental health, medical technology, end of life care, etc. We will also examine medical ethics theories/approaches and what might constitute Islamic theories/approaches for various Muslims.

This course is an introduction to Islam that pays special attention how we conduct scholarship on Islam. In addition to cultivating global literacy on theological and cultural aspects of the tradition, we will consider the ways Islam is pluralistic and subject to historical transformation rooted in economic, social, political, and technological shifts.

Is religion a sexist enterprise? How can we know? This course is about what it means to study religion from the perspective of gender. We will examine various approaches to the study of religion and gender through study of foundational texts in the subfields of feminist philosophy of religion, feminist religious history, and feminist, liberation, and queer theologies. How have scholarly understandings in these subfields of gender in religion unfolded and addressed critical questions about the gendered nature of religious concepts such as the divine, ritual, human nature, purity, the body, space, authority, marriage, and sexuality? If the study of gender in religion is to uncover an alternative account of religion, what is that account and who is left out and why? What about sub-altern people? We will thus contextualize the study of gender in religions in the broader frameworks of feminism and religious studies also to examine which discourses and traditions are privileged over others.

“Is Islam sexist?” “What does Islam really say about women?” This course seeks to dismantle the premises of these questions by asking who speaks for Islam and how are gender and gender roles constructed in Islamic texts and Muslim thought. We will make critical study of the constructions of gender, femininity, masculinity, sexuality, gender relations, marriage and divorce in classical and modern Islamic texts. In asking how Islamic notions of gender are constructed, we will examine both the roles religious texts have played in shaping Muslim life and how Muslim life in its cultural diversity affects readings of religious texts.

Develop global literacy and applied knowledge about Muslim feminist engagement with the Islamic tradition and men and women’s gendered experiences in Muslim communities and countries on a transnational level. This course introduces students to the diversity of feminist approaches to the Islamic tradition (scripture, religious law, and history) on a transnational scale, by examining the movements, activism, media, literature, and Islamic debates produced in predominantly Muslim countries and beyond. We will interrogate concepts of transnationalism and feminism in terms of Islamic theologies, historical developments, theoretical usage, the context of colonialism, and discourses of Muslim modernities. We will explore similarities and differences in feminist hermeneutical methodologies and women’s experiences across global Muslim contexts. Course materials will be made up of several primary sources in translation that deal with intersectional issues such as religious and cultural practices, educational systems, politics, race and racism, socioeconomic class, legal rights for men and women, and marriage and the family.

Muslim Ban? Women’s rights? Malcolm X? Enslaved Muslims? This course is about Muslims in America, past, present, and future, and how American Islam is an extension of global Islam and the ways it is uniquely American. As we study religious identity and understandings of Islam during the founding of this country, in enslaved Muslim narratives, the civil rights movement, waves of immigration, pre- and post- 9/11, and the current Muslim ban, we pay close attention to theorizations of contested histories, race, gender, and class dynamics, intersectionality, model minorityhood, assimilation, discrimination, and more. We will theorize origins and framing of anti-Muslim sentiment/Islamophobia. We will also spend a significant portion of the course studying concepts of Muslim selfhood in the current political climate.

How has current thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality formed our experiences and understandings of ourselves, the world we inhabit, and the world we envision? This course investigates basic concepts about sex, gender, and sexuality and considers how these categories intersect with issues of race, class, ethnicity, family, religion, age, and/or national identity. The course also considers the effects of sex, gender, and sexuality on participation in the work force and politics, on language, and on artistic expression. In addition to reading a range of foundational feminist texts, materials for analysis may be drawn from novels, films, the news, popular culture, and archival resources.