Islamophobia and Poetic Emancipation

• In Event: 61.071 - Sheraton Roundtable Session 10 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 61.071-12 - The Potentials of Critical Representation: Emancipatory Practices, Texts, and Contexts

Abstract

In this phenomenological qualitative study I examine the ways Baasim, a male Muslim student, uses writing in his English class to make sense of his encounters with Islamophobia. I analyzed data sources by combining intertextuality with a theory-based coding scheme that draws from a critical realist emancipatory framework to answer the following question: How does Baasim use poetry and essay writing to help him make sense of and resist forces which seek undermine his humanity? I found that in his writing he located much of the Islamophobic rhetoric he receives from media organizations which traffic in anti-Muslim discourses, and he was able to recognize that this does not only happen to Muslims but to other marginalized groups as well.

Author

• Lance Wheatley, Michigan State University