ID#: 2272 Oct 22 : Houston : Lunch & Learn: Lone Star Muslims:

Lone Star Muslims offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States.

Drawing on interviews and participant observation at radio stations, festivals, and ethnic businesses, the volume explores everyday Muslim lives at the intersection of race, class, profession, gender, sexual orientation, and religious sectarian affiliation to demonstrate the complexity of the South Asian experience. Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as “terrorist” on the one hand, and “model minority” on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences.

In his presentation, author Dr. Ahmed Afzal will focus on the importance of specificity and context in understanding the diversity and range of immigrant experiences within a specific ethnic group.

Schedule

Registration: 11:30 am
Box Lunch & Program: 12:00 pm

About the Speaker

A native of Pakistan, Dr. Ahmed Afzal received his BA in Third World Studies at Vassar College, and an MSc in Cultural Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MPhil and PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Yale University. His research interests include globalization and transnationalism; South Asian and Muslim immigrants in the United States; anthropology of mass media; gender and sexuality cross-culturally; urban life; and anthropology of Pakistan. Dr. Afzal has taught at Colgate University, Purchase College, and is currently a faculty member at California State University, Stanislaus.