Megan Prince Goodwin will present a talk entitled “Threatening Whiteness: Islam’s Challenge to American White Supremacy.”
Date: 1/30/2018
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Location: Holmes Hall, 270
Sponsored By: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program
Contact: wgss@northeastern.edu
WGSS visiting scholar Megan Prince Goodwin will present a talk entitled “Threatening Whiteness: Islam’s Challenge to American White Supremacy.” This is the last in a series of lunchtime lectures given by WGSS visiting scholars. Lunch will be served.
A week after the 2016 presidential election, a Georgia state legislator introduced a bill to expand the state’s 1951 anti-masking law to prevent Muslim women from covering their heads or faces “upon any public way or property.” In June 2016, Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards was charged with “felony lynching” for attempting to prevent Pasadena police officers from taking a suspect into custody; Maile (Mellie) Hampton, another African American activist, was arrested on similar charges in February 2015. Laws that were originally intended to expand religious freedom and protect minority communities are now being used to preserve white mainstream Christian privilege. This project considers the ways Islam and Muslims–particularly Muslims of color–challenge and threaten American white supremacy.
Megan Goodwin is a Visiting Scholar with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program at Northeastern University. She previously held positions as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Race, Religion, and Politics at Syracuse University, and as a Mellon Postgraduate Fellow in Creative and Innovative Pedagogy. Her work focuses on race, gender, sexuality, and American minority religions. Her most recent project examines the coding of religious difference as sexual danger; the next considers how and why Islam threatens American whiteness. Most recently, she has published in The Muslim World and Nova Religio. Her next articles will appear in CrossCurrents and Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses.
