A Postcolonial Autoethnography of a Muslim Teacher's Experiences in Teacher Education Programs

• In Event: Marginalized Positionality and Intersectional Understandings

Abstract

In my research project, I explore how the intersections of race, gender, and religion affect my experiences while I teach as a Hijabed South Asian woman at a predominantly white university.
Women from South Asia are stereotyped as poor, broken, victimized, and coming from an undeveloped world. The gendered effects of the empire in the form of othering further enhance biases associated with them. My visible Muslim identity as a Hijab wearing woman adds another layer of discrimination to me. Using autoethnography as a method and reflecting on my experiences as a female Muslim South Asian instructor teaching teacher education classes, I challenge the dynamics of race, Islamicism, and Orientalism ascribed to me as a South Asian Muslim woman.

Author

• Madiha Mohsin Syeda, Miami University (OH)