����

Friday, April 17th
Center for British and Irish Studies, 5th Floor, Norlin Library

10:45a - 11:30a Reception

11:30a - 11:45a Welcoming Remarks with Dr. Rachel Rinaldo, CAS Faculty Director, and Dr. John Masserini, Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at Metropolitan State University in Denver.

11:45a - 1:15p Panel One:��Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Life in Asia
Including the following papers:
"Domestic Violence in a Changing Landscape in Vietnam;" Lynne Kwiatkowski, Colorado State University
"Queer Futures in Okinawa: On Miyagi Futoshi’s American Boyfriend Project;" Daryl Maude, С���� Boulder
"Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health and Modernity in Indonesia;" Chiara Formichi, Cornell University
"Commodification of Intimacy in the K-pop World" Stephanie Choi, ���� Boulder
Moderator: Carla Jones, ���� Boulder

1:15 Remarks by Dr. Daryl Maeda, Interim Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, ���� Boulder

1:45p - 3:15p Panel Two:��Feminist Struggles and Social Movements in and beyond Asia
Including the following papers:
"The Forced Disappearance of Enforced Disappearances in Kashmir;" Ather Zia, University of Northern Colorado
"Is Climate Change Increasing Child Marriage?;" Amanda Carrico, ���� Boulder
"Sanctioning States, Silencing Speech: Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Movement and the Challenges of Transnational Feminist Solidarity;" A. Marie Ranjbar��
"Coming of (r)age in Pakistan: Exploring the Aurat March and its afterlives" Sana Malik, University of Denver
Moderator: Shae Frydenlund, ���� Boulder

3:30p - 4:30p Keynote Intimate Placemaking: Women, Care, and Community After Displacement
Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Georgetown University

Across Asia, the realm of gender, sexuality, and intimate relationships is shifting rapidly. New articulations of gender and sexuality have emerged, often in conversation with both local and Western categories. Women and sexual minorities have pushed for greater empowerment but in some countries, counter-movements are contesting hard-won rights. Changes in marriage and family and intimate life are generating political debates and contestations across the region. This year's theme will explore the flux of gender, sexuality, and intimate life across Asia, from both historical and contemporary perspective. We seek to highlight phenomena such as gender and sexuality related social movements, cultural expression, migration, work and labor, family and household life, law and politics, and regional/transnational connections.��

Participants

Amanda Carrico

Is Climate Change Increasing Child Marriage?��

Marriage is a socially and legally significant institution worldwide, marking an individual's entry into adulthood. However, the conditions under which a marriage begins have lasting impacts on health and well-being, especially for girls and women. Specifically, early marriage (before age 18) is associated with lower educational attainment, more frequent and high-risk pregnancies, and psychological distress. Although early marriage**—which disproportionately involves girls—**is declining, economic stress resulting from climate change has the potential to slow or reverse these trends. I examine this possibility using recent data collected from Bangladesh, a nation with one of the highest rates of early marriage in the world. I conclude with insights into strategies that might support women's well-being in the face of climate risk.

Dr. Amanda Carrico is Chair and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado – Boulder; as well as a fellow at the Institute of Behavioral Science and an affiliate of the С���� Population Center where she leads the Climate Change, Environment & Population Processes primary research area. Dr. Carrico’s work examines the behavioral dimensions of environmental change and responses to climate stress, with an emphasis on migration and livelihood adaptations. Dr. Carrico’s research has been funded by organizations such as the US National Science Foundation, NIH, and ONR; and her contributions have been recognized by invitations to join the National Academies Committee on Grand Challenges in Environmental Engineering and Science, APA’s Board of Scientific Affairs, and the journal��Climatic Change��as Deputy Editor and lead of the Psychology & Behavioral Sciences team. Dr. Carrico has led several international efforts to assess the impact of and responses to environmental change in agricultural communities. This includes the Bangladesh Environment and Migration Survey (BEMS), which collects sociodemographic data about migration, livelihoods, and climate stress in coastal Bangladesh. Dr. Carrico joined the University of Colorado in 2014 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment.

Stephanie Choi

Chiara Formichi

Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health and Modernity in Indonesia

In this talk I will flesh out how Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia’s progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. Women from all walks of life were called upon to fulfill domestic and motherly roles for the production and socialization of laborers, soldiers, and citizens, and pushed against the boundaries imposed on them by states and patriarchal orders. In this talk I will discuss how they rearticulated scientific mothering, nationalist maternalism, and Islamic ideals of motherhood to create a public voice through gendered care work, and the methodological challenges of doing so.

Chiara Formichi is Director of the Religious Studies Program and Professor in Asian Studies at Cornell University. She specializes on Islam in Southeast Asia focusing on the intersection of religion, politics and society in colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia. Chiara’s third monograph, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia��is forthcoming��with Stanford University Press

Shenila Khoja-Moolji

Intimate Placemaking: Women, Care, and Community After Displacement

Over the twentieth century, South Asian-origin Ismaili Muslims from East Pakistan and East Africa experienced repeated displacements. In the aftermath, how did they rebuild community? Professor Khoja-Moolji highlights the central role of women in this process. She traces how women recreated religious community (jamat) in North America through ordinary acts of care and reproductive labor. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Khoja-Moolji illuminates the intimate placemaking activities—from cooking for congregants and caring for the sick to preserving memory through miracle stories and cookbooks—through which women sustained spiritual kinship. By highlighting women’s intimate practices, Khoja-Moolji expands placemaking beyond physical space to encompass everyday acts of care, memory, and relational labor that sustain spiritual kinship.

Shenila Khoja-Moolji holds the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Endowed Chair of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. Her research explores how gender, race, religion, and power intersect in the lives of Muslim communities in South Asia and North America, with particular attention to experiences of displacement and community formation.

She is the author of��Forging the Ideal Educated Girl��(University of California Press),��Sovereign Attachments��(University of California Press),��Rebuilding Community��(Oxford University Press),��The Impossibility of Muslim Boyhood��(University of Minnesota Press), and��Thinking Past Crisis��(New York University Press, forthcoming). Her books have received multiple national and international awards from bodies such as the��International Studies Association, the��American Academy of Religion, the��Association for Feminist Anthropology, the��Comparative and International Education Society, the��Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the��Association for Middle East Women’s Studies. In addition to monographs, her research has appeared in flagship journals such as,��Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society;��Journal of the American Academy of Religion;��Feminist Theory;��Policy & Society;��Comparative Education Review;��Gender and Education; and the��Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.��

Lynne Kwiatkowski

Domestic Violence in a Changing Landscape in Vietnam

Women subject to marital violence from their husband in Vietnam have been experiencing a changing social, cultural and political landscape over the last few decades. Many women have been negotiating their suffering from this harm within a context of emerging conceptions of violence in families, and shifting legal, health, civil society, and global approaches to domestic violence. Some have fashioned novel interpretations of their experiences and found new options and opportunities to pursue in the face of the violence, while simultaneously coming up against persistent constraints. I examine the complex processes Vietnamese women face as they address violence in their marital relationships in a changing social arena in Vietnam.

Lynn Kwiatkowski is a professor of cultural anthropology and medical anthropology at Colorado State University. She received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has examined gender violence, global health, and international development processes in Vietnam and the Philippines. Her current research focuses on domestic violence in northern Vietnam, its impacts on health and well-being, and the effects of local approaches to domestic violence and of global movements against violence toward women in local Vietnamese communities. She previously conducted research on malnutrition and hunger among Ifugao people living in the Cordillera Mountains of northern Luzon Island of the Philippines. She is the author of��Struggling with Development: The Politics of Hunger and Gender in the Philippines.

Sana Malik

Coming of (r)age in Pakistan: Exploring the Aurat March and its afterlives

Women’s rage is well documented and debated in feminist theory, the mainstream media and social movements in the Global North. This paper asks: what is the affective threshold of women’s rage in contexts where public displays of anger or discontentment are not always possible? Building on interdisciplinary literature on feminist rage, this paper explores ‘raging’ as a framework that encompasses a range of women’s everyday affective practices of producing knowledge of themselves and making life livable in patriarchal, illiberal and fragmented landscapes. Utilizing 12 months of ethnographic research among urban women who participate in the annual Women’s (Aurat) March in Pakistan, I explore raging as a creative practice through which women cultivate knowledge of themselves in emerging public and digital spheres. By focusing on raging as a capacious category, this paper expands the boundaries of what counts as feminist rage and who is able to participate in it.

Sana Malik received her PhD in Anthropology from Emory University in 2025 and is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Denver. Her research explores the diverse political trajectories of feminist and non-feminist activists participating in emerging public and digital spheres in urban Pakistan. Sana’s research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Association of University Women.

Daryl Maude

Queer Futures in Okinawa: On Miyagi Futoshi’s��American Boyfriend Project

This paper will examine the works of Okinawan artist, filmmaker, and author, Miyagi Futoshi (ミヤギフトシ��,��b. 1981). For the past decade, Miyagi has been producing film, photography, installation, and prose fiction works centered around the conceit of the “American Boyfriend Project,” which asks whether an Okinawan man and an American man can fall in love in Okinawa. Performing close readings of his films including the 2013 “The Ocean View Resort,” as well as his accompanying “American Boyfriend Project” blog, I situate Miyagi’s question at the interstice between empires and the body, and draw on queer and affect theory to think about how Miyagi imagines a future.��

Daryl Maude is assistant professor of modern Japanese in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations and affiliate faculty in LGBTQ studies. He works on contemporary Okinawan and Japanese literature, feminism, and queer theory.

A. Marie Ranjbar

Sanctioning States, Silencing Speech: Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Movement and the Challenges of Transnational Feminist Solidarity

The death of Jhina Amini in 2022 sparked historic anti-government demonstrations throughout Iran.��As the state violently suppressed these women-led protests, debates intensified over whether US policy could support the aims of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. This moment raises a critical question: What might transnational feminist solidarity look like beyond interventionist logics? Using sanctions as an entry point, I examine how Iranian women’s rights are mobilized in US policy debates. Focusing on divisions within the Iranian American diaspora, I show how sanctions operate as political litmus tests, where opposition is equated with regime support. I argue that dominant sanctions discourses produce silencing and self-censorship, including harassment of Iranian American women who oppose sanctions��which is, paradoxically, framed through the language of solidarity with women��within��Iran.��Through a multiscalar analysis of discourses of sanctions, I trace how gendered authoritarianism in Iran, US sanctions that compound harm against protesters, and harassment against antiwar Iranian American women result in multiple and varied forms of gendered silencing.

A. Marie Ranjbar is��an interdisciplinary feminist scholar working at the intersection of political geography, critical human rights, and decolonial feminist theories. Her research theorizes how activists negotiate legibility, recognition, and political agency under authoritarian and geopolitical constraints, with a focus on environmental and social justice and transnational feminist solidarities.��

Ather Zia��

The Forced Disappearance of Enforced Disappearances in Kashmir��

Since 1989, more than 8000 Kashmiris have been forcibly disappeared by the Indian military occupation in Kashmir. It left families, especially women, in a prolonged state of uncertainty. Since 1994, Kashmiri women, as mothers, wives (called half-widows), and daughters, turned their grief into collective action through the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). Led by a mother named Parveen Ahangar, the group became a formidable human rights front that practiced mourning as a��form of politics. Since 2019, however, dissent has been increasingly criminalized in an unprecedented manner. Human rights groups have been effectively dismantled, defenders jailed and framed as terrorists, and all forms of public protests silenced, including the APDP. We are witnessing not only the disappearance of Kashmiri bodies, but the erasure of the language and memory of disappearance itself. This paper reflects on how this shift reshapes feminist politics and the possibilities of forms of resistance through mourning, activism, and speaking loss in Kashmir. By implication, this paper also reflects on what kind of voices are allowed, connecting this undemocratic crackdown to the dispossession of indigenous people through neocolonial and settler colonial forces globally.

Ather Zia, PhD, is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. She is the author of��Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir��(2019), which won the 2020 Gloria Anzaldúa Honorable Mention, the 2021 Public Anthropologist Award, the 2021 Advocate of the Year Award, and received an honorable mention for the 2021 Rosaldo Book Prize. She has been featured in��Femilist��2021, a list of one hundred women from the Global South working on critical issues. She is the co-editor of��Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak?��(Women Unlimited, 2020),��Resisting Occupation in Kashmir��(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), and��A Desolation Called Peace��(HarperCollins, 2019). Her recent collection of poems,��In Kashmir: Writing Under Occupation��(Agitate Collective, 2025), follows her earlier award-winning poetry recognized by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (2013)��and a chapbook titled��The Frame��(JK Cultural Academy). ��Ather is the founder and editor-in-chief of��Kashmir Lit, a literary magazine, and co-editor of��Cultural Anthropology��(2022–25). She is also a founding member of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary research group on the Kashmir region.