ayesha khurshid | Florida State University (original) (raw)
Papers by ayesha khurshid
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2019
The issue of education for Muslim women has become central to many global discourses and policies... more The issue of education for Muslim women has become central to many global discourses and policies focusing on Muslim countries. These paradigms present education for Muslim women as the solution to issues ranging from poverty to religious extremism. Embedded in these narratives is not only the image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their culture, but also the image of Islam as a patriarchal religion. Education becomes an instrument to empower these women through enabling them to challenge their “oppressive” cultural and Islamic traditions. In other words, education becomes a site, tool, and institution to arrange the empowerment of Muslim women against their families, communities, and Islam.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2017
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2017
ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall St... more ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to explore how these influential media sources characterize Islam and Pakistan to tell Malala’s story. Our discourse analysis reveals how these newspapers construct Malala’s status as a global icon as an embodiment of her subject position as a girl. This media discourse mobilizes Malala’s agency in relation to her potential as an individual whereas her vulnerability as a young girl is presented in reference to her Muslim heritage and culture. Malala’s image as a global icon, thus, is produced through approaching her as an agent in a culture where girls are vulnerable victims of patriarchy. Through focusing on this media discourse, this article argues that Malala’s image as a global icon of girls’ education has become a site to reinsert, rather than challenge, the dominant images about Islam and Muslim societies.
Gender and Education, 2017
Through focusing on forms of clothing, this article reveals how educated women from marginalized ... more Through focusing on forms of clothing, this article reveals how educated women from marginalized communities in Pakistan and India made differential claims to being modern. Our analysis of two ethnographic studies shows how the participants mobilized their subjectivities as modern and educated women through a distinction between 'local modern' and 'local traditional'. In this article, our goal is not to define modernity, but instead to illuminate what it meant to be modern in both contexts. We integrate the narratives of young, rural Muslim women in Pakistan with those of young, rural Hindu women in India to disrupt the linear telling of the production of universal and homogenous modernity through education.
Gender & Society, 2014
Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Mus... more Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi (educated) woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women complicates the prevalent narrative of modernity that presents women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam.
Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development, 2016
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani youth activist who has become a global icon for her advocacy of g... more Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani youth activist who has become a global icon for her advocacy of girls’ education, youth agency, and gender empowerment. Yousafzai started The Malala Fund, and her activism has become an inspiration for local and global organizations working on youth related issues. Through conducting a discourse analysis of newspapers published in the USA, we argue that this media discourse presents her not only as an agent but also as a victim. Our analysis reveals how this media discourse modifies Malala Yousafzai’s own narrative. It constructs her as a symbol of the oppression of the Muslim girls as well as the empowerment of youth to be acquired through Western education and modernity. This chapter highlights the need to critically engage with the global discourses of girls’ education, youth, agency, and gender empowerment that may be embedded in the problematic dichotomies of modern West versus unmodern Islam.
Empires, Post-Coloniality and Interculturality, 2014
Cross–cultural and international comparative research embodies a conundrum the very analytics of ... more Cross–cultural and international comparative research embodies a conundrum the very analytics of comparativeness in the social and education science research, with variations in their themes, draw from particular European and North American Enlightenments’ notions of reason and rationality that provide their epistemological “foundations”1
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2011
This article explores the experiences of teaching assistants from nonmainstream backgrounds in a ... more This article explores the experiences of teaching assistants from nonmainstream backgrounds in a predominantly white institution (PWI) of U.S. education. We focus on how such teaching assistants experience and respond to "microaggressions" or subtle challenges to their teaching based on race and ethnicity. We also explore the consequences of microaggressions for teaching assistants' future career plans. Analyses of life history interviews show how processes of microaggressions permeated teaching assistants' relationships with white prospective and cooperating teachers. The authors suggest ways to interrupt these in teacher education programs.
Infant and Child Development, 2007
ABSTRACT Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting ... more ABSTRACT Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting mediation, this study examined how early developmental contexts impact preschoolers' performances on a measure of sustained attention and impulse control. Data from 1273 European-American and African-American participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care were used to identify the potential mediators of the relation between early household income-to-need (INR) and 54-month impulsivity and inattention. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to determine whether the relationships between early income, home environment, parenting stress, and the outcome variables differ for African-American versus European-American-American children. We found modest support for the study hypothesis that 36-month home environment quality mediated the INR/attention relationship. INR accounted for more home environment score variance and home environment accounted for more Impulsivity score variance for African-American children. Home environments were related to inattention in the European-American, but not African-American, group. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2017
Comparative Education Review, 2016
The contemporary paradigm of international development invests in individuals and communities as ... more The contemporary paradigm of international development invests in individuals and communities as the main agents of development. In this paradigm, education is presented as the central avenue for individuals and communities to generate resources and networks to empower themselves. Some development and feminist scholars have critiqued this intense preoccupation with empowerment for being a tool of neoliberal global governance, which produces self-governing actors oriented toward the market. Instead of approaching development and empowerment paradigms as solely "good" or "bad," this ethnographic study examines how paradigms of education and empowerment are approached, translated, and contested in the day-today lives of the subjects of these paradigms. This analysis reveals a nonlinear and uneven impact of self-governing empowerment discourse in a women's education project in Pakistan and highlights how the development and empowerment discourse can become a site for dissenting voices and opinions.
Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2019, 2020
This chapter explores the colocation of ethnographic and discourse approaches in gender-focused r... more This chapter explores the colocation of ethnographic and discourse approaches in gender-focused research in comparative and international education. Drawing from the authors’ scholarship in the fields of girls’ education, women’s empowerment, and international education policy and development, this chapter highlights opportunities to interrogate culture in qualitative data through ethnographic and discourse approaches. The chapter concludes with reflection and future directions for these authors and for the field.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2012
Using ethnographic data, this article explores how Muslim women teachers from low-income Pakistan... more Using ethnographic data, this article explores how Muslim women teachers from low-income Pakistani communities employ the notion of "wisdom" to construct and perform their educated subjectivity in a transnational women's education project. Through Butler's performativity framework, I demonstrate how local and global discourses overlap to shape narratives that define individual rights as well as family honor as part of the educated subjectivity of Pakistani Muslim women. [Muslim women, women's education, human rights, performativity, globalization] bs_bs_banner
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2019
The issue of education for Muslim women has become central to many global discourses and policies... more The issue of education for Muslim women has become central to many global discourses and policies focusing on Muslim countries. These paradigms present education for Muslim women as the solution to issues ranging from poverty to religious extremism. Embedded in these narratives is not only the image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their culture, but also the image of Islam as a patriarchal religion. Education becomes an instrument to empower these women through enabling them to challenge their “oppressive” cultural and Islamic traditions. In other words, education becomes a site, tool, and institution to arrange the empowerment of Muslim women against their families, communities, and Islam.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2017
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2017
ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall St... more ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to explore how these influential media sources characterize Islam and Pakistan to tell Malala’s story. Our discourse analysis reveals how these newspapers construct Malala’s status as a global icon as an embodiment of her subject position as a girl. This media discourse mobilizes Malala’s agency in relation to her potential as an individual whereas her vulnerability as a young girl is presented in reference to her Muslim heritage and culture. Malala’s image as a global icon, thus, is produced through approaching her as an agent in a culture where girls are vulnerable victims of patriarchy. Through focusing on this media discourse, this article argues that Malala’s image as a global icon of girls’ education has become a site to reinsert, rather than challenge, the dominant images about Islam and Muslim societies.
Gender and Education, 2017
Through focusing on forms of clothing, this article reveals how educated women from marginalized ... more Through focusing on forms of clothing, this article reveals how educated women from marginalized communities in Pakistan and India made differential claims to being modern. Our analysis of two ethnographic studies shows how the participants mobilized their subjectivities as modern and educated women through a distinction between 'local modern' and 'local traditional'. In this article, our goal is not to define modernity, but instead to illuminate what it meant to be modern in both contexts. We integrate the narratives of young, rural Muslim women in Pakistan with those of young, rural Hindu women in India to disrupt the linear telling of the production of universal and homogenous modernity through education.
Gender & Society, 2014
Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Mus... more Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi (educated) woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women complicates the prevalent narrative of modernity that presents women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam.
Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development, 2016
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani youth activist who has become a global icon for her advocacy of g... more Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani youth activist who has become a global icon for her advocacy of girls’ education, youth agency, and gender empowerment. Yousafzai started The Malala Fund, and her activism has become an inspiration for local and global organizations working on youth related issues. Through conducting a discourse analysis of newspapers published in the USA, we argue that this media discourse presents her not only as an agent but also as a victim. Our analysis reveals how this media discourse modifies Malala Yousafzai’s own narrative. It constructs her as a symbol of the oppression of the Muslim girls as well as the empowerment of youth to be acquired through Western education and modernity. This chapter highlights the need to critically engage with the global discourses of girls’ education, youth, agency, and gender empowerment that may be embedded in the problematic dichotomies of modern West versus unmodern Islam.
Empires, Post-Coloniality and Interculturality, 2014
Cross–cultural and international comparative research embodies a conundrum the very analytics of ... more Cross–cultural and international comparative research embodies a conundrum the very analytics of comparativeness in the social and education science research, with variations in their themes, draw from particular European and North American Enlightenments’ notions of reason and rationality that provide their epistemological “foundations”1
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2011
This article explores the experiences of teaching assistants from nonmainstream backgrounds in a ... more This article explores the experiences of teaching assistants from nonmainstream backgrounds in a predominantly white institution (PWI) of U.S. education. We focus on how such teaching assistants experience and respond to "microaggressions" or subtle challenges to their teaching based on race and ethnicity. We also explore the consequences of microaggressions for teaching assistants' future career plans. Analyses of life history interviews show how processes of microaggressions permeated teaching assistants' relationships with white prospective and cooperating teachers. The authors suggest ways to interrupt these in teacher education programs.
Infant and Child Development, 2007
ABSTRACT Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting ... more ABSTRACT Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting mediation, this study examined how early developmental contexts impact preschoolers' performances on a measure of sustained attention and impulse control. Data from 1273 European-American and African-American participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care were used to identify the potential mediators of the relation between early household income-to-need (INR) and 54-month impulsivity and inattention. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to determine whether the relationships between early income, home environment, parenting stress, and the outcome variables differ for African-American versus European-American-American children. We found modest support for the study hypothesis that 36-month home environment quality mediated the INR/attention relationship. INR accounted for more home environment score variance and home environment accounted for more Impulsivity score variance for African-American children. Home environments were related to inattention in the European-American, but not African-American, group. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2017
Comparative Education Review, 2016
The contemporary paradigm of international development invests in individuals and communities as ... more The contemporary paradigm of international development invests in individuals and communities as the main agents of development. In this paradigm, education is presented as the central avenue for individuals and communities to generate resources and networks to empower themselves. Some development and feminist scholars have critiqued this intense preoccupation with empowerment for being a tool of neoliberal global governance, which produces self-governing actors oriented toward the market. Instead of approaching development and empowerment paradigms as solely "good" or "bad," this ethnographic study examines how paradigms of education and empowerment are approached, translated, and contested in the day-today lives of the subjects of these paradigms. This analysis reveals a nonlinear and uneven impact of self-governing empowerment discourse in a women's education project in Pakistan and highlights how the development and empowerment discourse can become a site for dissenting voices and opinions.
Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2019, 2020
This chapter explores the colocation of ethnographic and discourse approaches in gender-focused r... more This chapter explores the colocation of ethnographic and discourse approaches in gender-focused research in comparative and international education. Drawing from the authors’ scholarship in the fields of girls’ education, women’s empowerment, and international education policy and development, this chapter highlights opportunities to interrogate culture in qualitative data through ethnographic and discourse approaches. The chapter concludes with reflection and future directions for these authors and for the field.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2012
Using ethnographic data, this article explores how Muslim women teachers from low-income Pakistan... more Using ethnographic data, this article explores how Muslim women teachers from low-income Pakistani communities employ the notion of "wisdom" to construct and perform their educated subjectivity in a transnational women's education project. Through Butler's performativity framework, I demonstrate how local and global discourses overlap to shape narratives that define individual rights as well as family honor as part of the educated subjectivity of Pakistani Muslim women. [Muslim women, women's education, human rights, performativity, globalization] bs_bs_banner