Spiritual Placemaking: Shia Ismaili Muslim Women’s Seva in the Aftermath of Displacement

The Moynihan Institute, and the South Asia Center host Professor Khoja-Moolji for a virtual talk.

Professor Khoja-Moolji researches and writes about the interplay of gender, race, religion and power in transnational contexts. She explores this theme particularly in relation to Muslim populations in South Asia and in the North American diaspora. She is the author of the award-winning books “Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia” and “Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan.”

Her latest book, “Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality” (Oxford University Press, 2023) traces the transnational lives of Ismaili Muslim women. It follows their journeys, past and present, from colonial India to East Africa and then onto North America, and outlines the everyday forms through which they create spaces of joy, forge community, and practice ethical subjectivities.

In her talk, Professor Khoja-Moolji draws on oral histories, fieldwork and memory texts to illuminate the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship. She situates these activities within the framework of ethical norms that more broadly define and sustain the Ismaili sociality in order to disrupt the conventional articulation of displaced people as dependent subjects.