Teaching about Women and Islam in North Africa: Integrating Postcolonial Feminist Theory in the Classroom

Zayzafoon, Lamia Ben Youssef, Foreign Language Annals

Abstract: Using postcolonial feminist theory, the researcher attempts in this article to redefine the interpretive framework through which courses on Islam and North African women are being taught in American undergraduate classes. Several conceptual limitations have been identified: inadequate knowledge of the geography and history of North Africa; the discursive dichotomy between East and West; the production of the Muslim woman as a single category; the tendency to de-historicize Islam and Eastern cultures in general into unchanging and closed systems of religious practices and beliefs; the uncritical adoption of Islamic exegesis as an explanatory prism to understand all the woes of …

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Publication information: Article title: Teaching about Women and Islam in North Africa: Integrating Postcolonial Feminist Theory in the Classroom. Contributors: Zayzafoon, Lamia Ben Youssef - Author. Journal title: Foreign Language Annals. Volume: 44. Issue: 1 Publication date: Spring 2011. Page number: 181+. © American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Winter 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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