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Scholars and Scholarship: Production of Doctoral Knowledge on Women and Islamic Cultures

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Scholars and Scholarship: Production of Doctoral Knowledge on Women and Islamic Cultures Scholars and Scholarship: Production of Doctoral Knowledge on Women and Islamic Cultures General Editor Suad Joseph Compiled by: Tony Beukers, Eva Brown, Rhyen Coombs, Megan Fowler, Monica Garcia, Beth Lansom, Fatima Malik, Andrea McNees, Marya Osucha, Emily Rostel, Michelle Sandhoff, Cristeta Shope, Paulina Telderer, Nancy Wan Originally Published in EWIC Volume III: Family, Body, Sexuality and Health 2006 BRILL EWIC3_Schol&Scholar_470-544 11/15/05 4:46 PM Page 471 Scholars and Scholarship on Women and Islamic Cultures A Study of Ph.D. Dissertations: 1960–2002 List of Ph.D. Dissertations Compiled by Tony Beukers, Eva Brown, Rhyen Coombs, Megan Fowler, Monica Garcia, Beth Lansom, Fatima Malik, Andrea McNees, Marya Osucha, Emily Rostel, Michelle Sandhoff, Cristeta Shope, Paulina Telderer, Nancy Wan EWIC3_Schol&Scholar_470-544 11/15/05 4:46 PM Page 473 Scholars and Scholarship: Production of Doctoral Knowledge on Women and Islamic Cultures Introduction enced firsthand, and formulating their own femi- Globally, Muslims number over 1.3 billion peo- nist theories in a variety of fields. ple. Though a staggering number, this statistic does As many of the entries in Volume I of EWIC not reflect the extensive social and cultural impact richly document, scholarly and political produc- Islam has had historically. Muslims account for tion are intimately linked. In 1975, the United 18 percent of the world’s population, fewer than 20 Nations formally declared the first Decade of the percent of whom reside in the Middle East. Over Woman and by 1979 had approved the Convention half of the world’s Muslims live in South Asia – on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Against Women. International and national femi- Lanka, Nepal (India houses the second largest nist and non-feminist movements generated several Muslim population in the world, almost as many as decades of publically marketed country reports on the country with the largest Muslim population, the status of women, intense itineraries of inter- Indonesia). In Africa, Islam claims more faithful national conferences, and a mandate to collect or than any other major world religion – including contest information or held beliefs. International the rapidly growing Christian sects – dominating organizations focused attention and research on North Africa and boasting sizable populations in the status of women worldwide. The resulting mar- Djibouti, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, and Somalia. ket for young scholars with skills and expertise rel- Immigrants from Muslim majority countries (such evant to women, and, in some cases, women and as Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Pakistan, Islamic cultures, contributed to the production of and Indonesia) and some Muslim minority coun- increasing numbers of doctoral dissertations on tries (such as India and Malaysia) have come women and Islamic cultures, starting in the 1970s. to comprise significant populations in European With rapid advancements in computer technology countries, including France, Germany, and the and more global use of the Internet in the 1980s, United Kingdom. In the United States of America, students and universities increasingly submitted the Muslim population has grown exponentially in their dissertations and abstracts to collegiate data- recent years, through migration and conversion, bases, creating an accessible pool of information resulting in an estimated six million believers. on doctoral research. Taking note of this increase The world’s fastest growing religion, Islam has in research and accessibility to new information attracted a surge in scholarship in the past several flows, the authors of this article aim to document decades. The contemporary expansion of Islam and when, where, and how much doctoral research on the rise in world interest in Islamic cultures coin- women and Islamic cultures was produced since cided with the scholarly production associated with the 1960s. the second wave of feminism to trigger research on The number of dissertations produced yearly far women and Islamic cultures. This article chronicles exceeds those that are published and the number of the scholarly production of research on women doctoral degrees awarded far exceeds candidates and Islamic cultures from 1960 to 2002, with a hired in academia. Finding dissertations so far focus on doctoral dissertations written on topics beyond what is represented by faculty in academic relevant to EWIC. While Islam has been the subject departments, we wondered about the pathways of doctoral dissertations for over a century, it was and gateways for knowledge production. We were not until the second wave of the feminist movement particularly interested in discovering which topics in the 1970s that research on women and Islamic on women and Islamic cultures were most actively cultures made a significant appearance. The mid- being researched. The range of topics covered in the 1980s witnessed a rapid rise in doctoral disserta- dissertations was expansive – from women in early tions on women and Islamic cultures, peaking in and later Islamic discourses, to women and repro- the 1990s. Women around the globe were increas- duction, empowerment, social organizations, edu- ingly enrolling in universities, becoming engaged in cation, diasporas, revolutions, health, work, family, analyzing the gendered conditions they experi- law, citizenship, social movements, sexuality, sports, EWIC3_Schol&Scholar_470-544 11/15/05 4:46 PM Page 474 474 scholars and scholarship arts, literature, and the like. Although graduate stu- expansion group; 2. coding group; and 3. author dents often conduct research based on their per- tracking group. The result was a database of 1,030 sonal interests, they are also influenced by the dissertations. priorities of professors, universities, funding agen- cies, and the job market. The selection of topics for Database creation and expansion doctoral research, the selection of researchers for In compiling a list of doctoral dissertations, we faculty positions, and the tenuring of faculty are all initially relied on directories of academic associa- parts of the production of knowledge which privi- tions. To locate these directories, we accessed each lege certain areas of research and screen out others. University of California department’s web page, While not all those who complete doctoral dis- which subsequently generated dissertations on sertations intend to enter academia, correlations women and Islamic cultures, and pursued directo- between an author’s research and her/his likelihood ries of professional associations. This yielded only of securing an occupation in a related field offer an scattered information as the library of the Uni- index of opportunity which we sought to analyze. versity of California, Davis did not own many of Paying specific attention to university job opportu- these directories. The search for databases led nities, we were curious to see if employment at us to access ProQuest Digital Dissertations, the the university level is influenced by an author’s Digital Abstracts International/Digital Disserta- research subject. Given that the constant increase tions, or DAI, database1. DAI includes disserta- in doctoral production is not matched by academic tions primarily from the United States but also from job vacancies, universities can control their cur- Canadian and international institutions. While ricula through hiring strategies which then con- some schools automatically send all their disserta- tribute to molding the next generation of scholars. tions to DAI, students have the opportunity to sub- An examination of the production of doctoral mit their work as well. We utilized this database as knowledge offers an alternative gauge of the the key source for the expansion of our database. breadth of the field of women and Islamic studies, We developed a conglomerate list of disciplines in comparison to a review of publications. We built to be searched for each year, including but not a doctoral dissertation database dating from the limited to: 1960s to 2002. We compared the number of anthropology, art and archaeology, cultural studies, women and men who undertook research on EWIC demography, economics, folklore, geography, history, topics. We analyzed the topics most commonly history of science, Islamic archaeology, Islamic studies, researched, and tracked the employment outcomes linguistics, literary studies, oral histories, Orientalism, of the scholars completing these dissertations. philosophy, political science, population and health studies, sexualities, sociology, study of religions, and The purpose of this study is to provide prospec- women’s studies tive researchers with a sense of the breadth of the field of women and Islamic cultures drawn from The results ranged widely, as certain disciplines dissertation abstracts produced by doctoral stu- such as art history appeared to produce no disser- dents over the past half century and a sense of the tations, while others such as anthropology and scope of academic options. The data we gathered economics yielded over a thousand. Upon closer offer more possibilities for analysis than we were examination, however, we found that a mere 20 able to undertake. We consider this a project in dissertations in every 260 proved relevant. We process and invite others to build on this work. widened our search by expanding our list of key- words by adding words and phrases pertaining to Methodology the study of women and
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