When: Monday, April 29, 2024, 4:00 pm
Where: Webinar
Semiha Topal will discuss the changing dynamics between the Islamist and secularist regimes of power in Turkey within the last decade. Since 2018, an online platform with the name “You Will Not Walk Alone,” has been publishing anonymous letters from Turkish Muslims, the majority of whom are young women socialized into wearing the headscarf during the AKP era. By questioning what these young women are walking away from and what they are walking towards with their desire to remove their hijab, this virtual lecture offers a rethinking of the current role of the headscarf as a maker and/or marker of Islamic piety and political subjectivity.
The event is part of the MESA Global Academy Initiative.
Semiha Topal, recieved her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Arizona State University in 2012, with her dissertation on “Building a Pious Self in Secular Settings: Muslim Women in Modern Turkey.” She holds an M.A. in Gender Studies and Religion from SOAS, University of London in the UK. Before her current role as the Program Manager of the Tuohy Center for Interreligious Understanding at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH, Dr. Topal worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, and at William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, teaching courses on gender, secularism, and Islam, in Turkey and the Middle East.
Organized by:
Center for Near Eastern Studies
Cosponsored by:
Department of Gender Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center
