Faiza Rahman
Appointments
Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows
Department of Religion
Lecturer in Religion, Islamic Studies
Area of Expertise
Islamic Studies, Anthropology of Islam, Religion in South Asia, Gender Studies, Critical Menstruation Studies, Ethnographic Writing
Biography
Faiza Rahman pursues an inter-disciplinary and ethnographic approach to the study of Islam. Her scholarship focuses on the topics of reproductive care, menstrual norms, and sexual health in the Islamic context of Pakistan. Her book manuscript, Islamic Period: Menstruation and Muslims in Pakistan, is an anthropological study of the creation and circulation of Islamic knowledge about menstruation in Pakistani society. At the heart of Islamic Period is the relationship between menstrual guidance found in Qur'anic texts, and a cultural repertoire of Pakistani women's orally-transferred knowledge about menstrual medicine, menstrual ethics, and menstrual hygiene. This relationship, as the project argues, determines the extent of Pakistani women's engagement with the global feminist currents of menstrual activism in today's world. The project was undertaken through on-ground collaboration with menstrual health advocates in the city of Karachi. Additionally, the project addresses the critical need of speaking and writing about menstruation in Muslim contexts with empathy, responsibility, and cultural relativism.
Islamic Period received the 2024 Honorable Mention for the S.S. Pirzada Dissertation Prize in Pakistan Studies administered by the University of California, Berkeley. The project has been supported by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, and internal grants from Emory University.
Faiza has taught undergraduate classrooms in Pakistan, Singapore, and the US, teaching courses in Islamic Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and Feminist Theory. Before her academic journey, Faiza had a full-time career in print journalism for over three years in Pakistan, working the high-pressure graveyard shift of the newsroom. Her news reports, features, and editorials have appeared in English newspapers of Pakistan.
Education
PhD, Emory University, 2024
MA, National University of Singapore, 2017
BSc, LUMS -Pakistan, 2012
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