North American Muslim Women Artists Talk Back

This book focuses on the ways in which North American Muslim women artists "talk back" to dominant discourses about Muslim identity and work to counter mainstream stereotypes and representations. It examines the possibilities of constructing discourses of resistance to domination. Against a backdrop of dominant media representations of oppressed and passive Muslim women, the media interventions of the exceptional women artists whose voices are showcased in this book, demonstrate that Muslim women are diverse and autonomous agents who have, historically, and continue contemporarily, to fight against all forms of injustice including those that seek to circumscribe their realities and experiences. To explore expressions and articulations of alternative discourses, this book analyzes the media texts of exceptional women artists: the stand-up comedy of Palestinian-American Maysoon Zayid, the cinematic interventions of Iranian-American Shirin Neshat, and the television comedy of Pakistani-Canadian Zarqa Nawaz. Using a methodology consisting of a textual analysis grounded in the theoretical framework of postcolonial theory and informed by gender studies and alternative media research, the analysis is supplemented with semi-structured interviews with the artists. This book is suitable for scholars and students in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and Politics.

Kenza Oumlil is an associate professor in Communication at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Oumlil holds a PhD in Communication from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. She has published widely on representation, gender, and media, including articles in the Journal of North African Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Middle East Media, and Al-Jazeera English.

Introduction; 1: Talking Back to Power; 2: Assertions of Unintelligibility: Shirin Neshat's Visual Innovations; 3: Using Humour to Talk Back: The Stand-Up Comedy of Maysoon Zayid; 4: Transitioning to the Mainstream in Television: Zarqa Nawaz's Film and Television Productions; 5: Conclusions; Appendix A: Resource Guide