Margot Badran

DURHAM, N.H. – The University of New Hampshire welcomes Margot Badran, a specialist in women and gender in the Muslim world, who will discuss Islamic feminism at this year’s Holden Lecture.

“Islamic Feminism Today” takes place at 12:40 p.m. Thursday, March 25, 2010, in the Memorial Union Building, Room 334/336. The lecture is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, Center for the Humanities and Department of Anthropology, and is free and open to the public.

In conjunction with the Holden Lecture, UNH will present the film “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think” at 12:40 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, 2010, in the Memorial Union Building, Room 332. It is free and open to the public.

Badran will look at contemporary developments in Islamic feminism and trace its trajectory from the first appearance of this phenomenon in the early 1990s. She will discuss gender politics, Islam, secularism, and identity in global and local contexts, drawing upon her scholarship and personal experience in far-flung parts of the Muslim world.

Badran holds the Reza Khatib and Georgianna Khatib Visiting Chair in Comparative Religion at St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn. She is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a senior fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown. In her teaching, research, and writing she focuses on feminisms and related issues of human rights and democracy in Muslim majority countries in parts of Africa and Asia and in Muslim minority communities in both East and West.

She is the author of many books, including “Gender and Islam in Africa” (The Woodrow Wilson Press); “Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences” (Oneworld Publications, Oxford); “Feminism beyond East and West: New Gender Talk and Practice in Global Islam” (Global Media Publications, New Delhi); and “Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt” (Princeton University Press). She is writing a book on Islamic feminism looking at global and local campaigns and thinking within religious and secular frameworks.

The John T. Holden Memorial Fund was established in 1995 in memory of John Holden, one of the university’s outstanding teachers of political science, who served that department for 25 years, many as chair. Speakers are selected on a rotating basis to represent the various social science disciplines. Past Holden speakers have included James Alan Fox, Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University; Lance Bennett, Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communications and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington; Stanley Katz, Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University; and William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling more than 12,200 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.

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Margot Badran
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