This book is an ethnographic study of the practices and purposes of women attending literacy classes in Egypt. Beginning in two rural classes, the research progresses to focus on two urban classes, including Muslim and Christian women, from teenage years to those in their fifties. The construction of literacy in performance-based classrooms, and in common, socially-held understandings of learning, disallows much of the womens own experiences, literacies and identities. Community attitudes around roles and gender affect attendance at literacy classes more than the motivation of individuals....
This book is an ethnographic study of the practices and purposes of women attending literacy classes in Egypt. Beginning in two rural classes, the res...
What happens when Muslim women gather together at the mosque to read the Qur'an, learn, and pray? How does family loyalty interact with mosque attendance for women? This book explores the growing Muslim women's piety movement through looking at one women's program in a Syrian suburban mosque. Community models shape individual behavior. The place and power of blessing help define the boundaries between orthodox and popular Islam. Modesty and shame, feasts and fasting, purity and prayer, interact to shape daily life possibilities for women involved in the mosque program. At the same time, the...
What happens when Muslim women gather together at the mosque to read the Qur'an, learn, and pray? How does family loyalty interact with mosque attenda...