Uploaded December 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
A Workshop & Masterclass with
Mayanthi Fernando (University of
California Santa Cruz), Gilbert Caluya
(University of South Australia), Yassir
Morsi (University of South Australia)
Programme:
9.30: Welcome by Alana Lentin
9.45: Mayanthi Fernando - Lecture
11.00: Coffee Break
11.30: Gilbert Caluya
12.00: Yassir Morsi
12.30: Roundtable discussion).
1pm: Lunch Break
2pm – 4pm: Masterclass with PhD and advanced
undergraduates on ethnographic
methods.
Abstracts:
Mayanthi Fernando
Improper Intimacies, or the Cunning of Secularism
How does the public/private distinction so central to secular-liberal democracy map onto the secular state's regulation of the sexual and religious lives of minoritized communities? Focusing on contemporary France, this talk analyzes how the political and legal practices aimed at securing secularity by rendering both sex and religion normatively private paradoxically compel Muslim women to reveal in public the innermost details of their sexual and religious lives. That dual incitement to hide and to exhibit, and the grim consequences of exhibiting that which must be hidden, constitute what might be called the cunning of secular power.
Gilbert Caluya
Domestic Terrorism: Counter-terrorism's Domopolitics and Muslim Domesticities
Recent left-wing calls in Australia to re-label domestic violence as 'domestic terrorism' in order to redirect funding to more important issues of violence, tends to elide the multiple ways that terrorism, more specifically counter-terrorism, affects Muslim households. This short paper briefly traces the image of the home that underlies Western counter-terrorism/counterinsurgency efforts in order to see how Muslim domesticities are being shaped by the continuing War on Terror. It argues that Muslim homes are primary sites for the elaboration of the intimate violence of the state.
Yassir Morsi
Everyday Islamophobia and Islamism
The paper examines the political response by young Muslims to ongoing debates about being Muslim in Australia through, what I term, ‘everyday Islamism’. The paper draws on cultural theories of the ‘everyday’ to distinguish between ‘surface’ or ‘front stage’ Islamism and the ‘back stage’ or hidden social forces ‘beneath the surface’ of local experiences with the aim of understanding young Muslims’ political critiques as expressed in their ambivalent Islamic-Australian voice. I examine whether the Islamophobic practice of over politicising, scrutinising, debating, the everydayness of Muslim life constructs, supports, and shapes an Australian form of Islamism as its response: that turns everyday act into an act of resistance.
A Workshop & Masterclass with
Mayanthi Fernando (University of
California Santa Cruz), Gilbert Caluya
(University of South Australia), Yassir
Morsi (University of South Australia)
Programme:
9.30: Welcome by Alana Lentin
9.45: Mayanthi Fernando - Lecture
11.00: Coffee Break
11.30: Gilbert Caluya
12.00: Yassir Morsi
12.30: Roundtable discussion).
1pm: Lunch Break
2pm – 4pm: Masterclass with PhD and advanced
undergraduates on ethnographic
methods.
Abstracts:
Mayanthi Fernando
Improper Intimacies, or the Cunning of Secularism
How does the public/private distinction so central to secular-liberal democracy map onto the secular state's regulation of the sexual and religious lives of minoritized communities? Focusing on contemporary France, this talk analyzes how the political and legal practices aimed at securing secularity by rendering both sex and religion normatively private paradoxically compel Muslim women to reveal in public the innermost details of their sexual and religious lives. That dual incitement to hide and to exhibit, and the grim consequences of exhibiting that which must be hidden, constitute what might be called the cunning of secular power.
Gilbert Caluya
Domestic Terrorism: Counter-terrorism's Domopolitics and Muslim Domesticities
Recent left-wing calls in Australia to re-label domestic violence as 'domestic terrorism' in order to redirect funding to more important issues of violence, tends to elide the multiple ways that terrorism, more specifically counter-terrorism, affects Muslim households. This short paper briefly traces the image of the home that underlies Western counter-terrorism/counterinsurgency efforts in order to see how Muslim domesticities are being shaped by the continuing War on Terror. It argues that Muslim homes are primary sites for the elaboration of the intimate violence of the state.
Yassir Morsi
Everyday Islamophobia and Islamism
The paper examines the political response by young Muslims to ongoing debates about being Muslim in Australia through, what I term, ‘everyday Islamism’. The paper draws on cultural theories of the ‘everyday’ to distinguish between ‘surface’ or ‘front stage’ Islamism and the ‘back stage’ or hidden social forces ‘beneath the surface’ of local experiences with the aim of understanding young Muslims’ political critiques as expressed in their ambivalent Islamic-Australian voice. I examine whether the Islamophobic practice of over politicising, scrutinising, debating, the everydayness of Muslim life constructs, supports, and shapes an Australian form of Islamism as its response: that turns everyday act into an act of resistance.
