Shahana Munazir Receives Hyde Dissertation Research Award

Shahana Munazir, a graduate student in University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Department of Anthropology, has received the Hyde Dissertation Research Award for Graduate Students. She holds a  Bachelor’s in History from the University of Delhi and Master of Science and Master of Philosophy from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation is titled “Daughters of Destiny: Politics of ‘Gharelu’ Muslim Women in India” described in the abstract below:

In a twelve-month ethnographic study, my work will understand how Muslim women habitually attend to others in their daily lives, the politics of relatedness that ensues from such care, social worlds that demand care-giving responses from women, and the meanings that women attach to religious vocabulary as motivations for acts of caregiving. It will highlight that being gharelu is an alluring habitus and an ongoing process of self-improvement aided by caregiving. In so doing, my study will reveal the significance that Muslim women attach to destiny or future time and the way they frame their personal desires and social worlds. In highlighting these eschatological concerns of destiny and quotidian responsibilities of care, within a decolonial framework, my project extends research on the shifting dynamics and meanings of care in localized contexts in India, as well as nuance the simplistic perceptions of aspirations of a ‘modern’ Muslim woman to provoke a reconsideration of the everyday that is morally and ethically contested.