17/04/2025
Call for Papers: An Edited Book
2025 MLA Special Session:
Visibility, Media, and Censorship in Contemporary Palestinian-American Muslimah Literature
Edited by: Hasnul Insani Djohar ([email protected])
The writer of Rewriting Islam, Decolonialism, and Contemporary Muslimah Literature
(Ohio State University Press, 2024)
Although Edward Said’s Orientalism was published almost five decades ago, Muslims and Arabs are still seen as foreigners and enemies in contemporary Anglo-American society. They occupy a symbolic space of otherness and constitute an easy target for racial profiling and discrimination based on their religious and ethnic affiliations. In the context of the United States, for Arab-American women of Muslim descent, these forms of otherness and discrimination are complicated by the persistence of their configuration as silent victims who are incapable of making their voices heard and their presence visible. Challenging such assumptions and representations of Muslim-American women, this edited book examines writings by Palestinian-American women of Muslimah descent to investigate the use of literary texts ranging from novels, memoirs, self-writing, short stories, and poems as tools for contesting imperial figurations of power in general and Israeli Zionism in particular. As such, this edited book investigates how these Palestinian-American women writers of the ummah (Muslim community) depict the struggles of their characters and portray the consequences of Zionism regarding settler colonialism, US neo-imperialism, and global transnational capitalism. Arguably, this strategy is vital to the questioning of the legacy of European colonialism and global capitalism rooted in white supremacy. This edited book focuses on the ideas of visibility, media, and censorship in contemporary Palestinian American Muslimah literature, but not limited to other topics in contemporary Palestinian American literature, are also welcome.
This edited book is a part of the 2025 MLA special session on Visibility, Media, and Censorship in Contemporary Palestinian-American Muslimah Literature. It explores various genres and strategies the writers use, and it probes their depiction of memory, monuments, gender, space, and the environment (among others) linked to the ideas of visibility to challenge settler colonialism as reflected in the Israeli occupation of Palestine that has been going on for over seventy-five years. The rationale for organizing an edited book on this particular topic, namely contemporary Palestinian-American literature by Muslim women and its ways of challenging US neo-imperialism linked to Israeli Zionism, is to achieve a better understanding of the role of this literature in challenging colonial power structures and shaping spaces of gendered resistance to imperial and colonial power. This approach sheds light on the importance of visibility and activism in developing alternative forms of belonging and community. It also counters the exclusion of these women and their concerns in women’s studies, postcolonial studies, and women of color feminism.
In its engagement with notions of power and resistance, this project draws on existing scholarship in women's studies and postcolonial studies to highlight struggles against white supremacy and JIS, Jewish Israeli supremacy. In light of this focus, this edited book uses foundational theories in postcolonial, women’s, and ethnic studies to generate original contributions pertinent to the subject matter. Its emphasis on how Palestinian-American Muslim women writers challenge both neo-colonialism and white sovereignty illuminates Muslimah visibility and activism in contemporary literature of the global ummah (Muslim community). The methodology arrayed strikes a balance between cultural and literary theory on the one hand and close readings with attention to historical, cultural, and religious contexts on the other to probe this subject's complex and intricate layers. This book particularly engages scholars, students, and readers interested in Muslim-American, Palestinian-American, Global South Muslim, Contemporary Muslimah Literature, and SWANA studies. It will be helpful for various scholars engaged in developing frameworks to study how ethnic literature challenges white supremacy, develops Muslimah visibility, and catalyzes activist/political engagements. As such, this edited book ultimately contributes to carving strategies to decolonize the English curriculum and create alternative frameworks for studying decolonization and resistance in contemporary Islamic literature by Palestinian-American women writers.
Please submit your abstracts no longer than 150 words with your short biographies no longer than 100 words to the email below:
Hasnul Djohar: [email protected]
Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
The abstract deadline: May 30, 2025
The acceptance notice: June 15, 2025
The full papers (6000-6500 words with the MLA style) submitted: December 20, 2025
Hasnul Insani Djohar: [email protected]
a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence (2024) at Southern Utah University; an Associate Professor of English in Contemporary Muslimah Literature; and the Head of the English Department at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University Jakarta (2019-2023). She is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of MEL: Muslim English Literature Journal: https://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/mel
And she is the writer of Rewriting Islam, Decolonialism, and Contemporary Muslimah Literature (OSU Press, 2024): https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215715.html
Considers a wide range of contemporary works by American Muslimah writers, showing how they seek gender and social justice through interconnectedness, spirituality, and sisterhood across diverse communities.
