Dr Rogaia Abusharaf (Qatar U.) The impact of Arabization and Islamization on identity and self-hood among the Southern Sudan's indigenous peoples (2003)
Over twenty years of civil war in predominantly Christian Southern Sudan has forced countless people from their homes. My project examined the lives of women who have forged a new community in a shantytown on the outskirts of Khartoum, the largely Muslim, heavily Arabized capital in the north of the country. I debunked the myth that these settlements are utterly abject, and instead discovered a dynamic culture where many women play an active role in fighting for peace and social change. I also examined the way women's bodies are politicized by their displacement, analyzing issues such as religious conversion, marriage, and female circumcision.
Publications:
2009. Transforming displaced women in Sudan: Politics and the body in a sqatter settlement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
n.d. Life in Khartoum: Probing Forced Migration and Cultural Change among War-Displaced Southern Sudanese Women. Paper submitted for consideration in UCL Conference on Immigration: Impacts, Integration, and Intergenerational Issues March 29-31, 2006.
2005. Smoke Bath: Renegotiating Self and the World in a Sudanese Shantytown. Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 30(1): 1-21.