Articles and Book Chapters by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
City Culture and Society, 2024
This paper examines the intimate relationship among gender, religion, and the urban with a specia... more This paper examines the intimate relationship among gender, religion, and the urban with a special focus on Muslim women in Delhi, India. Drawing on interviews conducted with young, middle-class, unmarried Muslim women, this paper demonstrates that Muslim women's lived experiences of religion and gender are often complex and situated at the intersections of embodied spatial practices of religion, gender and urban-ness. Predominant understanding of Indian Muslim women focuses on their gendered religious enactments such as purdah (veiling), oppression by Muslim men, and their need to be ‘rescued’ from Islamic systems of oppression. However, these narratives do not fully capture the complexity of Muslim women's embodied experiences and encounters with the urban. In turn, this paper investigates how Muslim women's experiences of the urban unfold at the interstices of gendered and religious geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city in everyday life and exceptional contexts. I argue that the intersection of gender, religion and the city is nuanced, ad-hoc, and paradoxically shift and change within the historical socio-spatial urban context of Delhi.
Gender, Place and Culture, 2024
In a city where violence against women is an everyday reality and a highly contested subject, gen... more In a city where violence against women is an everyday reality and a highly contested subject, gendered claims to the city are also fraught with possibilities and problems. This paper evaluates some of these issues through speech act and resilience of young, unmarried, middle-class women in Delhi, India. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how these women navigate public spaces, respond to violence and fear, and claim their rights to the city. I argue that these women’s speech act and resilience are forms of everyday resistance to the violent gender order in the city. The paper also demonstrates that violence, fear, speech act and resilience are interlaced into women’s everyday lives. In turn, I argue, the divide between gendered violence and women’s agency is not discreet spaces but are relationally produced in a city where pluralities, contradictions, and contestations are embodied realities for women. Speech act and resilience thus provide spaces for meaningful discussions on how women (re)articulate their place in the city amidst gendered violence and fear.
Journal of the British Academy, 2021
The public health containment measures in response to COVID-19 have precipitated a significant ep... more The public health containment measures in response to COVID-19 have precipitated a significant epistemic and ontological shift in 'bottom-up' and 'action-oriented' approaches in development studies research. 'Lockdown' necessitates physical and social distancing between research subject and researcher, raising legitimate concerns around the extent to which 'distanced' action-research can be inclusive and address citizens' lack of agency. Top-down regimes to control urban spaces through lockdown in India have not stemmed the experience of violence in public spaces: some have dramatically intensified, while others have changed in unexpected ways. Drawing on our experiences of researching the silent histories of violence and memorialisation of past violence in urban India over the past three decades, we argue that the experience of subaltern groups during the pandemic is not an aberration from their sustained experiences of everyday violence predating the pandemic. Exceptionalising the experiences of violence during the pandemic silences past histories and disenfranchises long struggles for rights in the city. At the same time, we argue that research practices employed to interpret the experience of urban violence during lockdown in India need to engage the changing nature of infrastructural regimes, as they seek to control urban spaces, and as subaltern groups continue to mobilise and advocate, in new ways.
Routledge Publications, 2021
This chapter focuses on young women’s spatial politics and embodied practices designed to pursue ... more This chapter focuses on young women’s spatial politics and embodied practices designed to pursue gender equality in Delhi. It focuses on the Pinjra Tod (‘Break the Hostel Cages’) movement, a collective of female students that engages with prefigurative feminist politics to challenge paternalistic logics of surveillance, gendered spatial-temporal control, moral policing and securitisation on university campuses. The Collective works to create spaces of protest, recognition and reflection in order to demand their rights to the city, to roam freely, organise, and dwell in spaces of gender equality. This chapter was originally published as part of a special issue of the journal Space and Polity.
The Bastion, 2020
While the Indian Constitution promises a secular nation, religion-based discrimination remains ce... more While the Indian Constitution promises a secular nation, religion-based discrimination remains central to the lived experiences of many
Muslims. Growing instances of Islamophobia across Assam have successfully converted this pandemic into a communal agenda that gauges
one’s ‘Muslimness’.
Space and Polity, 2020
Drawing upon contemporary academic debates around
comparative urbanism combined with theoretical ... more Drawing upon contemporary academic debates around
comparative urbanism combined with theoretical post-colonial reorientations, this paper focuses on young women’s spatial politics and embodied practices designed to pursue gender equality in Delhi. It focuses on the Pinjra Tod (‘Break the Hostel Cages’) movement, a collective of female students that engages with prefigurative feminist politics to challenge paternalistic logics of surveillance, gendered spatial-temporal control, moral policing and securitisation on university campuses. The Collective works to create spaces of protest, recognition and reflection in order to demand their rights to the city, to roam freely, organise, and dwell in spaces of gender equality.
Mahatma Gandhi: The Champion Crusader, 2011
In this paper we discuss the ways in which gender becomes a sidelined category in the educational... more In this paper we discuss the ways in which gender becomes a sidelined category in the educational discourses of empowerment in India. While there are a large number of policies and programmes that are formulated to cater to women and their aspirations for education, these programmes continue to build o traditional gender roles that confine women to the home sphere, thus, missing the link between gender, education and empowerment.
Conferences and Invited Lectures by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
The proposed session aims to bring together geographical perspectives on practices of feminist an... more The proposed session aims to bring together geographical perspectives on practices of feminist and decolonial solidarity that not only foster recovery but also engender social justice in the Global South. On the one hand, intersectional inequalities and marginalities are key concerns in the Global South which are exacerbated by
neoliberalism, new forms of colonisation, patriarchies and heteronormativities, violence, disasters, climate change and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the Global South is also a key site of feminist discourses and struggles which build on decolonial and intersectional forms of solidarities (Spivak 1988; Mohanty 2003; Motta 2013; Sultana 2022). In many instances, these burdens and responsibilities are feminised, where “it is the bodies and labour of women and girls that constitute the heart of these struggles” (Mohanty 2003: 249). In this context, this GFGRG session invites papers which explore how feminist solidarities are formed amidst historical and contemporary forms of inequalities and differences, and how
these solidarities are practiced to not only recover but to “move beyond recovery”, to echo the Conference Chair Rachel Pain’s statement. We are interested in papers that centralise the voices and struggles of the marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
RGS_IBG AC2022 Sessions, 2022
The proposed session aims to bring together geographical perspectives on practices of feminist an... more The proposed session aims to bring together geographical perspectives on practices of feminist and decolonial solidarity that not only foster recovery but also engender social justice in the Global South. On the one hand, intersectional inequalities and marginalities are key concerns in the Global South which are exacerbated by neoliberalism, new forms of colonisation, patriarchies and heteronormativities, violence, disasters, climate change and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the Global South is also a key site of feminist discourses and struggles which build on decolonial and intersectional forms of solidarities (Spivak 1988; Mohanty 2003; Motta 2013; Sultana 2022). In many instances, these burdens and responsibilities are feminised, where “it is the bodies and labour of women and girls that constitute the heart of these struggles” (Mohanty 2003: 249). In this context, this GFGRG session invites papers which explore how feminist solidarities are formed amidst historical and contemporary forms of inequalities and differences, and how these solidarities are practiced to not only recover but to “move beyond recovery”, to echo the Conference Chair Rachel Pain’s statement. We are interested in papers that centralise the voices and struggles of the
marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
University of Cambridge, 2021
Location: University of Cambridge, Wolfson College Gender Research Hub
Date: 14 May 2021
Link: ht... more Location: University of Cambridge, Wolfson College Gender Research Hub
Date: 14 May 2021
Link: https://wolfson.cam.ac.uk/about/events/beyond-borders-womens-movements-around-world
This presentation focuses on young women’s collective resistance against institutionalized patriarchal norms that exclude women living in gender-segregated hostels, a ubiquitous form of housing available to younger and predominantly unmarried women, from the wider urban geographies of Delhi, India. This form of gendered exclusion is normalised and rationalized using gendered fear of violence, bodily regulations such as spatial-temporal restrictions on movements and social regimes of control. In turn, the presentation will discuss the ways in which young women form collectives based on shared experiences, solidarity and recognition of intersectional difference to produce more inclusive urban conditions and spaces.
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 2021
25-27 January 2021
This paper focuses on the intimate relationship between gendered religious pra... more 25-27 January 2021
This paper focuses on the intimate relationship between gendered religious practices and the differential use and appropriation of the city. Drawing on interviews conducted with young Muslim women in Delhi, India I argue that lived experiences of religion often produces complex and paradoxical relationship between young women and the city. Previous research has demonstrated that religious practices such as veiling shape Muslim women’s engagement with the city. For instance, Secor (2002) argues that embodied practices such as veiling are women’s spatial practices to ensure their continued mobility in the city (see also Listerborn 2015). Najib and Hopkins (2019) establish that many women reinvent their mobility patterns to accommodate growing Islamophobic discrimination in everyday urban life. These analyses, although central to the understanding that gendered urban access is a deeply religious experience, focus only on overt embodied religious practices in public spaces. I, however, argue that Muslim women’s religion-mediated interactions with the city move beyond these overt public embodied practices that signal “Muslimness” to ostensibly ‘different’ and ‘stranger’ urban dwellers. Instead, the gendered city is a product of both overt and covert gendered religious practices performed at the interstices of the public and private geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city. As a result, I argue, the embodied intersections between gender, religion and the city are much more nuanced, ad-hoc, and paradoxical that shift and change within the historical socio-spatial context wherein gender and religion are invoked in the city.
Syeda
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK
24 July 2020.
This conference paper focuses on the experiences of migration of single young women from North Ea... more This conference paper focuses on the experiences of migration of single young women from North East India to Delhi, which is a fast growing socio-cultural group in the city. They hold a peculiar position in the city in terms of the discrimination and violence that they face because of their physical appearances (mongoloid features), cultural differences, and their affinity towards western culture promulgated by western missionaries well before the British rule. The paper discusses the issues of migration, finding a home and some related issues of access to the city-space of these women.
Fifth CESI International Conference 2014, Delhi, 16-18 November 2014.
India's Development Strategy: Discourses on Past, Present and Future, 2013
Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India
Reports and Policy Briefs by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
Deshkal Publications, 2016
Supported by the Planning Commission of India, 2014 and The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Pr... more Supported by the Planning Commission of India, 2014 and The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Programme, DFID, UK
My role: Research Assistant
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Articles and Book Chapters by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
Muslims. Growing instances of Islamophobia across Assam have successfully converted this pandemic into a communal agenda that gauges
one’s ‘Muslimness’.
comparative urbanism combined with theoretical post-colonial reorientations, this paper focuses on young women’s spatial politics and embodied practices designed to pursue gender equality in Delhi. It focuses on the Pinjra Tod (‘Break the Hostel Cages’) movement, a collective of female students that engages with prefigurative feminist politics to challenge paternalistic logics of surveillance, gendered spatial-temporal control, moral policing and securitisation on university campuses. The Collective works to create spaces of protest, recognition and reflection in order to demand their rights to the city, to roam freely, organise, and dwell in spaces of gender equality.
Conferences and Invited Lectures by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
neoliberalism, new forms of colonisation, patriarchies and heteronormativities, violence, disasters, climate change and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the Global South is also a key site of feminist discourses and struggles which build on decolonial and intersectional forms of solidarities (Spivak 1988; Mohanty 2003; Motta 2013; Sultana 2022). In many instances, these burdens and responsibilities are feminised, where “it is the bodies and labour of women and girls that constitute the heart of these struggles” (Mohanty 2003: 249). In this context, this GFGRG session invites papers which explore how feminist solidarities are formed amidst historical and contemporary forms of inequalities and differences, and how
these solidarities are practiced to not only recover but to “move beyond recovery”, to echo the Conference Chair Rachel Pain’s statement. We are interested in papers that centralise the voices and struggles of the marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
Date: 14 May 2021
Link: https://wolfson.cam.ac.uk/about/events/beyond-borders-womens-movements-around-world
This presentation focuses on young women’s collective resistance against institutionalized patriarchal norms that exclude women living in gender-segregated hostels, a ubiquitous form of housing available to younger and predominantly unmarried women, from the wider urban geographies of Delhi, India. This form of gendered exclusion is normalised and rationalized using gendered fear of violence, bodily regulations such as spatial-temporal restrictions on movements and social regimes of control. In turn, the presentation will discuss the ways in which young women form collectives based on shared experiences, solidarity and recognition of intersectional difference to produce more inclusive urban conditions and spaces.
This paper focuses on the intimate relationship between gendered religious practices and the differential use and appropriation of the city. Drawing on interviews conducted with young Muslim women in Delhi, India I argue that lived experiences of religion often produces complex and paradoxical relationship between young women and the city. Previous research has demonstrated that religious practices such as veiling shape Muslim women’s engagement with the city. For instance, Secor (2002) argues that embodied practices such as veiling are women’s spatial practices to ensure their continued mobility in the city (see also Listerborn 2015). Najib and Hopkins (2019) establish that many women reinvent their mobility patterns to accommodate growing Islamophobic discrimination in everyday urban life. These analyses, although central to the understanding that gendered urban access is a deeply religious experience, focus only on overt embodied religious practices in public spaces. I, however, argue that Muslim women’s religion-mediated interactions with the city move beyond these overt public embodied practices that signal “Muslimness” to ostensibly ‘different’ and ‘stranger’ urban dwellers. Instead, the gendered city is a product of both overt and covert gendered religious practices performed at the interstices of the public and private geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city. As a result, I argue, the embodied intersections between gender, religion and the city are much more nuanced, ad-hoc, and paradoxical that shift and change within the historical socio-spatial context wherein gender and religion are invoked in the city.
Syeda
Reports and Policy Briefs by Dr. Syeda J E N I F A Zahan
My role: Research Assistant
Muslims. Growing instances of Islamophobia across Assam have successfully converted this pandemic into a communal agenda that gauges
one’s ‘Muslimness’.
comparative urbanism combined with theoretical post-colonial reorientations, this paper focuses on young women’s spatial politics and embodied practices designed to pursue gender equality in Delhi. It focuses on the Pinjra Tod (‘Break the Hostel Cages’) movement, a collective of female students that engages with prefigurative feminist politics to challenge paternalistic logics of surveillance, gendered spatial-temporal control, moral policing and securitisation on university campuses. The Collective works to create spaces of protest, recognition and reflection in order to demand their rights to the city, to roam freely, organise, and dwell in spaces of gender equality.
neoliberalism, new forms of colonisation, patriarchies and heteronormativities, violence, disasters, climate change and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the Global South is also a key site of feminist discourses and struggles which build on decolonial and intersectional forms of solidarities (Spivak 1988; Mohanty 2003; Motta 2013; Sultana 2022). In many instances, these burdens and responsibilities are feminised, where “it is the bodies and labour of women and girls that constitute the heart of these struggles” (Mohanty 2003: 249). In this context, this GFGRG session invites papers which explore how feminist solidarities are formed amidst historical and contemporary forms of inequalities and differences, and how
these solidarities are practiced to not only recover but to “move beyond recovery”, to echo the Conference Chair Rachel Pain’s statement. We are interested in papers that centralise the voices and struggles of the marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
marginalised communities situated along different intersectional of power relations such as gender, class, race, caste, migration, age, and sexuality.
Date: 14 May 2021
Link: https://wolfson.cam.ac.uk/about/events/beyond-borders-womens-movements-around-world
This presentation focuses on young women’s collective resistance against institutionalized patriarchal norms that exclude women living in gender-segregated hostels, a ubiquitous form of housing available to younger and predominantly unmarried women, from the wider urban geographies of Delhi, India. This form of gendered exclusion is normalised and rationalized using gendered fear of violence, bodily regulations such as spatial-temporal restrictions on movements and social regimes of control. In turn, the presentation will discuss the ways in which young women form collectives based on shared experiences, solidarity and recognition of intersectional difference to produce more inclusive urban conditions and spaces.
This paper focuses on the intimate relationship between gendered religious practices and the differential use and appropriation of the city. Drawing on interviews conducted with young Muslim women in Delhi, India I argue that lived experiences of religion often produces complex and paradoxical relationship between young women and the city. Previous research has demonstrated that religious practices such as veiling shape Muslim women’s engagement with the city. For instance, Secor (2002) argues that embodied practices such as veiling are women’s spatial practices to ensure their continued mobility in the city (see also Listerborn 2015). Najib and Hopkins (2019) establish that many women reinvent their mobility patterns to accommodate growing Islamophobic discrimination in everyday urban life. These analyses, although central to the understanding that gendered urban access is a deeply religious experience, focus only on overt embodied religious practices in public spaces. I, however, argue that Muslim women’s religion-mediated interactions with the city move beyond these overt public embodied practices that signal “Muslimness” to ostensibly ‘different’ and ‘stranger’ urban dwellers. Instead, the gendered city is a product of both overt and covert gendered religious practices performed at the interstices of the public and private geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city. As a result, I argue, the embodied intersections between gender, religion and the city are much more nuanced, ad-hoc, and paradoxical that shift and change within the historical socio-spatial context wherein gender and religion are invoked in the city.
Syeda
My role: Research Assistant