Abstract This article explores the evolution of Black women’s humor from its historic origins to its contemporary manifestations. The author argues that Black women humorists, including Zora Neale Hurston, the Queens of Comedy, and comediennes on A Black Lady Sketch Show, interrogate the daily and varied oppressions that Black women face. In doing so, they reveal not only the intersectional nature of Black female comedy but also the previously unexplored political aspects of Black women’s humor.

Research Article| April 01 2022 Remittances Elizabeth Pérez Elizabeth Pérez Elizabeth Pérez is associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her first book, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (NYU Press, 2016) was awarded the 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, and received honorable mention for the 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in several journals and two edited volumes. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Meridians (2022) 21 (1): 155–157. https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-9554112 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Elizabeth Pérez; Remittances. Meridians 1 April 2022; 21 (1): 155–157. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-9554112 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsMeridians Search Advanced Search masculinity, Cuban revolution, misogynoir, racism/anti-Blackness, Latinx immigration, kinship Copyright © 2022 Smith College2022 You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This article examines Black/Girlhood Imaginary, a transdisciplinary methodology that merges performance studies, Black studies, and education to research and theorize the capacious archives of Black girlhood. What the authors term Black/Girlhood Imaginary is a multivalent prism that aids in the recovery of the losses, the undermining, the layered violence, the joys, and the embodied experiences of Black girls. As a methodology, Black/Girlhood Imaginary weaves both the fullness and fissures of Black girlhoods, opening up the space for Black girls to recover their own images. The authors use the methodologies of Black/Girlhood Imaginary to analyze three case studies beginning with Judy Winslow’s unexplained disappearance from the popular 1990s sitcom Family Matters. The authors then move into a literary analysis of a poem written by Paradise, a student, who theorizes state-sanctioned violence in her community. The authors end with a poem about Daniele, an employee embedded between diasporic economies. These case studies illustrate representations, perspectives, and experiences of Black girls in the kaleidoscope of the Black/Girlhood Imaginary.

Abstract This article explores the possibilities of distinctly queer and Muslim futures rooted not only in Muslim diaspora communities but in the Muslim world itself. The Palestinian intifadas of 1987 and 2000 are the author’s primary inspiration, whereas the future becomes a blank canvas onto which one can imagine the next global intifada, a giant popular uprising fought on many fronts. The author examines the work of artists Jassem Hindi, Layla tul Qadr, Saba Taj, and Hushidar Mortezaie, who look at the future in terms of parallel imaginative possibilities rather than in temporal terms. In addition to these artists, the writings of scholars and artists Jose Estaban Muñoz, Ronak Kapadia, Etel Adnan, and Hamed Sinno further emphasize the future-facing nature of both queerness and Islam, as well as the radical possibilities of telling queer Muslim stories in the future.

Abstract This essay focuses on two cases in which Muslim youth were murdered yet law enforcement refused to classify the murders as hate crimes. It examines the 2015 murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and the 2017 murder of Nabra Hassanen in Reston, Virginia. This author argues that the denial of these cases as hate crimes contributes to the diminishment of anti-Muslim racism and should be understood as a form of racial gaslighting—a systematic denial of the persistence and severity of racism. In conversation with those advocating for rethinking the criminal justice system through prison abolition and restorative justice, it posits that seeking state recognition for hate crimes cannot provide justice given that the state is responsible for constructing Muslims as a national security threat. It explores how anti-Muslim racism is upheld through extremely narrow and problematic definitions of racism and hate crimes, through an approach to hate crimes that prioritizes punishment over civil rights, and through creating a dilemma for Muslim communities who must seek recognition of anti-Muslim racism from the same state that enacts surveillance and violence on them.

Abstract This article is in two parts. The first part provides an overview of the life of the Egyptian feminist Doria Shafik (1908–1975) by drawing extensively on the work of her biographer Cynthia Nelson. This allows readers unfamiliar with Shafik to understand her social, political, and cultural milieu. The second part consists of translations from the Arabic of four editorials that Shafik wrote in her feminist magazine Bint al-Nīl.

Abstract This review article is a state of the field review, based on six recent monographs and edited volumes published in the United States, India, and England, all pertaining to women’s studies or women’s history in South Asia.

Other| April 01 2021 Shazia’s Dream Upasana Agarwal Upasana Agarwal Upasana is a nonbinary illustrator and artist based out of Kolkata, India. They have been working as an illustrator for the last seven years. Upasana’s work explores identity and personal narratives by using a visual remnant or evidence of the contexts they work with. They are especially drawn to patterns that communicate complex truths about the past, present and future. When Upasana is not illustrating, they organize and run a queer and trans community art center in the city. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Meridians (2021) 20 (1): 248. https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8913236 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Upasana Agarwal; Shazia’s Dream. Meridians 1 April 2021; 20 (1): 248. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8913236 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsMeridians Search Advanced Search My work often explores queer identity via repetition in patterns. In this work I look at Shazia, my friend, who finds intimacy and peace with herself on a hot summer’s day. She almost crosses the wall but pauses for a moment to ponder. Shazia is playful and not intimidated by the wonder that surrounds her as she explores her various identities in the paradoxical South Asian space. Copyright © 2021 Smith College2021 Issue Section: Cover Art You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract In this article the author builds on the idea of Bangladeshi national cinema as human rights cinema to explore its role in documenting and engendering understanding about women, vulnerability, and agency within a Muktijuddho gender ideology. Drawing from feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins’s conceptualization of a Black gender ideology, the author proposes that in cinematic traditions, an idealized Muktijuddho gender ideology influences and entrenches gendered social norms and reinforces perceptions of masculinity and femininity in war. These perceptions serve to justify patterns of legibility, recognition, and rejection for discursive practices of national inclusion and exclusion. Specifically, the author analyzes Nasiruddin Yousuff’s Guerrilla (2011), an award-winning film featuring the story of Bilqis Banu, a middle-class, Muslim female combatant who takes on at once the national struggle for self-determination and the gender struggle against patriarchal cultural norms. The film opens up new ways of imagining the category birangona and elicits a deeper appreciation of differentiated agency, vulnerability, and humanity.

Abstract The awarding of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize to Deborah Smith’s English translation of The Vegetarian brought global recognition to emergent Korean literature, but domestically it has sparked outrage among numerous Korean scholars who believe the literal inaccuracies in Smith’s translation have brought about a “national disgrace.” Situating this overheated reaction in the larger context of the colonial history of Korean nationalism, this article points out the irony that the “noble cause” of anti-imperialist resistance has historically led to the silencing of women’s voices in the context of preserving and transmitting an idea of quintessential Korean culture to an international audience. Such nationalist tendencies demand the “feminization” of the translator—requesting her to be barely visible while performing a self-effacing humility in deference to the putatively “original” culture. In contrast to this tendency, reading Han’s original and Smith’s translation together makes visible the damages that both colonization and nationalism have inflicted on the representation of female experiences. In the end, what truly scandalizes nationalist critics is not the failure of the translator to accurately convey Korean experiences, but the success of the translation in conveying an area of Korean experience they tend to neglect: that of female subjectivity.