The “Exotic Other”: A Poetic Autoethnography of Two Muslim Teachers in Higher Education

Abstract

Considering the current political climate and the terrorist attacks associated with few Muslims around the world, being Muslim females in the United States is challenging. While our religious identity is visible by our Islamic attire, we found ourselves in the frontlines fighting against hatred, stereotypes, bigotry, and racism toward Muslims. In this article, we present our experiences of living a non-White existence when teaching at a White institution in higher education in the United States. Adding to the existing body of research about Muslims in the United States, the study aims at shedding the lights on this experience of Muslim female academics to raise awareness about such struggle and to promote more inclusive environment for Muslims in educational sphere. To voice these experiences, we utilized poetry as a research method by selecting poems from our poetic autoethnography. The analysis of the poems revealed three major themes: (a) Conceptualizing Agency, (b) The Muslim Ban, and (c) Challenging Diversity. In addition, the findings of the study suggest that poetry can be healing and empowering.

White Apathy and Pedagogical Renegotiations: An Autothistoria-teoría of Teaching While Sick, Tired, and Brown

“…It has also facilitated my engagement in Anzaldúan-inspired practices of autohistoria-teoría -that fusion of "cultural and personal biographies with memoir, history, storytelling, myth, and other forms of theorizing" (Keating, 2009, p. 9)which would have otherwise been made invalid under more traditional forms of academic knowledge expression and dissemination. As it will be evident throughout this text, and as others have demonstrated via their own explorations of their academic lives as Othered (Ashlee et al, 2017;Boylorn, 2013;Diversi & Moreira, 2016;Elbelazi & Alharbi, 2019;Johnson, 2013;Toyosaki, 2018;Ward Randolph & Weems, 2010), autoethnographic methods allow marginalized individuals in academic spaces to operationalize and make sense of its constitutive, violent practices and give our readers the chance to act and transform their own worlds (Denzin, 2013). For some of us, autoethnographic texts are one of the few methods of epistemological connection and intellectual transformation that allows us to "embrace vulnerability with purpose, make contributions to existing scholarship, and comment on/critique culture and cultural practices."…”

Efforts of Islamic Religious Education Teachers in Shaping the Personality of Muslim Students at SDIT Insan Utama Kasihan

“…This method is used to obtain data in the field for the reason of knowing the situation/circumstances regarding something related to the efforts of Islamic religious education teachers in forming the Muslim personality of students at SDIT Insan Utama Kasihan. The sources observed were SDIT Insan Utama Kasihan students in order to see the personalities of the students at the school (Elbelazi & Alharbi, 2020;Mateo, 2019). The next source of observation was the Islamic religious education teacher, in order to obtain data regarding the efforts made by teachers in forming the Muslim personality of students at SDIT Insan Utama Kasihan as well as the factors that hinder and support it.…”

Poetry and possible selves: Crisis theory with/in teacher education programs

“…Poetry, used across numerous interdisciplinary studies in social sciences and humanities ( Elbelazi & Alharbi, 2020 ; Görlich, 2020 ; Prendergast, 2009 ), is an excellent conduit for analyzing data ( Roberts et al., 2014 ) as it offers “a stimulating way of reflecting on our lives and the lives of others” ( Foster, 2012 , p. 753). Furthermore, as Folkman and Moskowitz (2004) assert, much is attained by “asking people to provide narratives about stressful events, including what happened, the emotions they experienced, and what they thought and did as the situation unfolded” (p. 750).…”