Doing the ‘Work of Hearing’: Girls’ Voices in Transnational Educational Development Campaigns

- Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Teacher's College

 

In this talk, Shenila Khoja-Moolji reflects on the recent prominence of campaigns about girls’ education within the field of international educational development and attends to the forms of knowledge that are produced in and through them about black and brown girls generally, and Muslim girls specifically. In doing so, she de-links girls’ education from its moral register and sees it instead as an analytical category with complex social and political functions. Making campaigns such as the White House’s Let Girls Learn, Plan International’s Because I am a Girl, and Gordon Brown’s I am Malala the object of her inquiry, Khoja-Moolji argues that discourses about girls’ education are not simply about that. In fact, they are entangled with discourses about brown/black men, religious belongings, and ideals of neoliberal citizenship.

 

Shenila Khoja-Moolji is a research fellow and doctoral candidate at Columbia University’s Teacher's College. Her research interests include Muslim masculinities and femininities, immigrant youth, and discourses of girls’ education. Prior to Columbia University, Khoja-Moolji attended the Divinity School at Harvard University, where she graduated with a Masters of Theological Studies focusing on Islamic studies and gender. Khoja-Moolji’s work has appeared in Gender and Education, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, and Feminist Teacher, as well as in the form of several book chapters. She has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses on gender, Muslim cultures, immigrant education, and social foundations of education.

 

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