Description
Product Description
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In
Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the ‘educated girl’ to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women’s and girls’ education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-subjects with specific relationships to the patriarchal family, paid work, Islam, and the nation-state. Thus, discourses on girls’/ women’s education are sites for the construction of not only gender but also class relations, religion, and the nation.
Review
"Essential reading for academics, researchers, and students interested in questions of gender and South Asia." ―
Reading Religion
"Khoja-Moolji beautifully conveys the complexity of the constantly shifting and [re]articulated educated subjectivities and class identities of Muslim woman/girls in South Asia." ―
LSE Review of Books
"A complex and intriguing genealogy of the educated Muslim girl that is relevant for colonial India and Pakistan, and beyond." ―
Politics and Gender
"Khoja-Moolji provides an engaging critical examination of mainstream narratives of education as inherently empowering institutions, as well as the stereotypes of Muslim girls, women, and societies, that is accessible to education researchers and students alike." ―
Comparative Education Review
"Khoja-Moolji is able to identify multiple tiers of nuance in issues pertaining to access to education, class differences, and imposing perceptions by Western ideologies." ―
Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society
"Readers will be equipped to understand Muslim women and girls in a more nuanced light, rather than as a monolith." ―
Feminist Theory
"A compelling account of the evolving political and social dynamics that have generated and situated ‘girl-centric’ educational reforms in colonial India. . . . contributes significantly to the dearth of current literature on the context and concepts of global neoliberal education." ―
Gender and Education
"This book’s rich interdisciplinary scholarship and new insights into re-examining questions around girls’ education and its myriad links to ideas of development make it an important read for scholars across fields of education, gender studies, anthropology and media studies." ―
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education
From the Inside Flap
"This ambitious and pathbreaking genealogical study of the circulation and political uses of the dense figure of the educated South Asian Muslim woman/girl is brilliantly executed and utterly timely. Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of South Asia—colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary—Khoja-Moolji has mined the cultural archives of the past and present. With an unerring eye for the significant detail, enviable analytical clarity, and a sustained commitment to offering alternatives, she has written an exemplary book destined to become a classic. It promises to transform our thinking, not just in the scholarly fields of South Asian and Pakistani studies or transnational feminism but in policy and the popular imagination."—Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
"A brilliant and unprecedented study. Historically grounded and methodologically sophisticated, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Muslims in South Asia and the gendered complexities of education."—Jamal J. Elias, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania
"This groundbreaking book examines the historical reform debates as well as contemporary transnational development cam