Speaker:  Prof. Patricia Sloane-White (UDelaware, US)

Theme: “Gender Issues in Academia” − In Conversation with Professor Patricia Sloane-White

Abstract: The Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware is the second oldest in America. But it has struggled over the years for recognition, resources, and respect. The feminist bell hooks wrote in her book From Margin to Center that contemporary feminism requires listening to overlooked voices—but how does a small, overlooked department of women and gender studies grow over fifty years? I entered the Department of Women and Gender Studies with precisely the mission to move from the margin to the center: to ensure the Department’s centrality at the University of Delaware, not only in how we were organized, how we contributed to the University, and in how we serve students and the community. How has one of the smallest—and most overlooked—undergraduate departments in a major Ph.D.-granting research university increased its standing, enrollment, and advocacy? Where have we made an impact? What role does our curriculum play in changing campus culture? How do we balance advocacy and teaching? Should an academic department serve an advocacy role at all? And, finally, how well is the University of Delaware addressing gender and racial inequity in general—and what is the Department’s role in that?

Speaker’s biography: Professor Patricia Sloane-White is a social anthropologist who earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology at Amherst College, her M.A. in Anthropology at Princeton University, and her DPhil at University of Oxford. She is a professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies with joint appointments in Asian Studies and Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware, USA. She has been teaching at the University of Delaware since 2002, and prior to that was teaching tutorials in Social Anthropology at Oxford University, served as a post-doctoral researcher at the National University of Malaysia (UKM), and is the recipient of two Fulbright Awards. She has researched Islam, Muslim entrepreneurship, and corporate business in Malaysia for nearly 30 years and has written numerous articles on the Malaysian Muslim middle class, gender, shariah, zakat, and the Muslim workplace. The author of Islam, Modernity and Entrepreneurship among the Malays (Palgrave/Macmillian, 1998), her recent book, the winner of several awards in law and religion, is Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2017). The book was translated into Turkish in 2021. Patricia served as the Chair of the Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Studies group, a section of the Association for Asian Studies in the U.S. for four years until 2022 and currently serves as a member of its Executive Committee.

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This seminar is the second of two events with Professor Sloane-White organized by CSEAS’s Gender Equality Promotion Committee, with the generous support of the Kyoto University Research Coordination Alliance (KURCA). 

For the first seminar on “Frontiers of Gender Studies in Asia: ”Gendering Sharia in the Muslim Workplace: Corporate Islam in Malaysia”,” taking place on Tuesday, the 4th of July 2023, please RSVP here.

We are also able to provide a professional sitter service for parents who would like to participate in these seminars. Please write to us at danjokyodo [at] cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp by 15:00h on the 23rd of June 2023 if you require this service.

For general inquiries, please contact Nurul Huda Mohd. Razif at nhm27 [at] cantab.net.