Shenila Khoja-Moolji Boeken

Sovereign Attachments rethinks sovereignty by moving it out of the exclusive domain of geopolitics and legality and into cultural, religious, and gender studies. Through a close reading of a stunning array of cultural texts produced by the Pakistani state and the Pakistan-based Taliban, Shenila Khoja-Moolji theorizes sovereignty as an ongoing attachment that is negotiated in public culture. Both the state and the Taliban recruit publics into relationships of trust, protection, and fraternity by summoning models of Islamic masculinity, mobilizing kinship metaphors, and marshalling affect. In particular, masculinity and Muslimness emerge as salient performances through which sovereign attachments are harnessed. The book shifts the discussion of sovereignty away from questions about absolute dominance to ones about shared repertoires, entanglements, and co-constitution.

Focusing on the resilience of Shia Ismaili Muslim women, this book explores how they reestablished their religious community after multiple displacements in the twentieth century. Through oral histories and fieldwork, the author highlights their placemaking efforts, showcasing activities like cooking for celebrations and caring for fellow members. The narrative emphasizes the significance of memory work, including miracle stories and cookbooks, in fostering spiritual kinship and community bonds among these women.

Rebuilding Community tells the story of Shia Ismaili Muslim women who recreated religious community (jamat) in the aftermath of successive displacements over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Shenila Khoja-Moolji illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congregants on feast days and looking after sick coreligionists to engaging in memory work through miracle stories and cookbooks.

"In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women's and girls' education by arguing that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, is concerned with molding girls into the kinds of subjects needed to advance societal projects such as nation building, modernization, and solidifying religious identity. Such concerns are often driven by material and cultural struggles for power. Thus, discourses around education for girls and women are sites for the construction not only of gender identity but also of class, religion, and the nation"--Provided by publisher