UC Davis professor emeritus, sitting with hands folded, in front of shelves filled with books
Suad Joseph (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)

Grant Awarded for Ongoing Muslim Women and Media Project

Anthropologist Suad Joseph receives $45K ACLS award

Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, is among a cohort of three interdisciplinary teams awarded $45,000 each from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to advance public understanding of global religions. 

The new award builds on an ongoing UC Davis project on Muslim women and the media, as well as a New York Times media project, both led by Joseph. “Decolonizing the Representation of Muslim Women in the Media: Training Next Generation Journalists” is an extension of Joseph's 25 years as general editor of Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, which compiles more than 1,500 articles written by over 1,200 authors on gender studies and the Islamic world. "This [journalists' training] project is one of our many ways of sharing/disseminating that knowledge," Joseph said.

The grants, which are made possible by funding from the Henry Luce Foundation to ACLS, support projects at U.S. colleges and universities that connect scholars in the humanities and interpretive social sciences with journalists and media outlets to improve public understanding of the many roles religion plays in global public life. Only three projects were funded in this program.

The ACLS described the project:

The past two decades witnessed massive escalations of Islamophobia, with the media their most powerful vehicle. Disproportionally, Islamophobic hate crimes have targeted Muslim women, gendering Islamophobia. This project assembles experts on women and Islamic cultures and journalists for a year-long seminar to train early career journalists in the diverse histories of women and Islamic cultures producing teaching modules/products for universities and templates for media organizations on decolonizing the representation of women of color and deracializing religion.”

The 18-month ACLS award builds on an earlier $340,000 Luce Foundation grant for the same project led by Joseph, which has provided training for more than 40 young journalists.  

— Karen Nikos-Rose, UC Davis News and Media Relations

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