Global South Futurisms: Muslim Superheroines and Radical Creative Imagination

• In Event: All over the world: Transnational Futurisms

Abstract

This paper examines the Littatfan Soyayya or romance fiction in Hausa in Nigeria; Muslim superheroines in the animated series Burqa Avenger in Urdu from Pakistan; and the children’s literature series Jannah Jewels in English in North America. I argue that these creative feminist projects employ “shifting” techniques, where women shift from centers to margins and even shift the margins to the centers; reimagine audience (Nfah-Abbenyi, 1991; Nkealah, 2016); and provocatively counter the cooptation of their bodies and agendas as “echo chambers” for freedom (Abbas, 2014). I foreground these techniques as Muslim women’s creative and radical contestations of their global de-centering.

Presenter

• Shirin Edwin, New York University Shanghai