Afiya S. Zia is a feminist researcher and activist based in Karachi, Pakistan. She has published in scholarly journals and recently written in the Guardian on the topic of her lecture. Presently she is working on a book titled ‘Faith and Feminism’.

Afiya Zia will trace the backlash against the liberal and/or secular women’s movement as betrayers of the Muslim (male) cause. She will also discuss the misguided prescription of academic and developmental projects that advocate the instrumentalization of Islam as an appropriate and ‘authentic’ approach in Muslim contexts. Her concern is to recover the nascent working class secular movements that are being rendered invisible in the competing discourses of Islam, imperialism and nationalism.

This event is sponsored by the UMass Amherst South Asia Students Association, Women and Gender Studies, Sociology, Amherst College, Mt Holyoke’s Kuch Karo and the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives, Mt. Holyoke College.