Attiya Ahmad is an Assistant Professor in both the Religion and Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies departments. A Toronto native, Professor Ahmad completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke and received her undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Toronto in International Development Studies and Sociocultural Anthropology, respectively. In addition to her academic interests, Professor Ahmad enjoys biking, taking walks, reading about design, and watching the TV show “Community.” 

The Argus: What are you currently reading?

Attiya Ahmad: Well, besides the books for my courses, I’m reading Washington Irving’s “Tales of the Alhambra.”

A: What kind of books do you have on your bookshelf?

AA: I guess it depends which bookshelf. On my academic bookshelf, I have a mixture of feminist theory, critical theory, Islamist studies works. I have two offices, so this one has most of my Islam books. My FGSS office has my feminist theories works, as well as ethnographies and works from anthropologists.

A: What kind of books do you like to read for fun?

AA: A whole range. I like works that examine modern design, and I recently bought a bunch of books about Arabic graffiti, Arabic geometrical designs linked to modernist art. And I also really love some Japanese manga series.

A: I used to read Sailor Moon as a kid!

AA: [laughs] Yeah my sister was into Sailor Moon. I’m reading the Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood right now.

A: Can you talk a little about your background: your academic history, how you got to Wesleyan, what classes you’re teaching?

AA: So I came to Wesleyan last year, and I teach in the FGSS and Religion programs. My training is somewhat varied. In my undergraduate years, I actually did development studies, which is a specialized program at the University of Toronto which is interdisciplinary, where you learn different facets of international and political economic issues linked to disparities and differences in different countries’ development. I focused on political economy and the Middle East. Part of the program entails working with NGOs, so I worked with NGOs in Toronto, Pakistan, and the West Bank and Gaza. While I was working in the West Bank, I was really taken with and became greatly influenced by the work of the Birzeit University’s women’s studies unit. Many of the scholars there were anthropologists, and so that pushed me towards thinking more seriously about anthropology, and I pursued that for my graduate studies.

A: Can you talk about the kinds of research you did, especially your project involving migrant workers in Kuwait?

AA: Initially I was researching Al-Huda, which is a Pakistani-Islamic women’s organization that spread through parts of the Middle East, North America, and Europe. I was researching their spread in Kuwait when I learned about migrant domestic workers who were converting to Islam. I learned it was a pretty widespread phenomenon, and different actors in Kuwait have different ways of explaining this phenomenon. Migrants and foreign residents, who make up about two-thirds of the population in Kuwait, saw these conversions in purely instrumental terms, that the women were converting because they would be treated better or paid better, whereas many Kuwaitis I met, especially those who were involved with Islamic groups, saw the conversions as these women coming to recognize the benefits and the beauty of Islam.

So there were very different accounts being told. And when I spoke to some of the women themselves who were converting, they had different ways of talking about their experiences than the other groups. I was really taken by that. At the time, my understanding of migrant domestic workers was pretty similar to most peoples’ today, or to people who read The New York Times, and the international news, and so on and so forth: that they’re an oppressed population and they’re exploited for the most part, and treated poorly. Through my research, I learned the nuances of their situation, that, for the most part, they are in a really difficult situation but it’s not just linked to their employers’ treatment of them. They are often have really impoverished backgrounds. They shoulder a great deal of responsibility within their families and their communities that lead them to migrate.

A: What countries are they usually from?

AA: They come from throughout Southeast Asia and South Asia, and increasingly, in the past ten years or so, from East Africa. So, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Ethiopia. But the composition of domestic workers really changes every few years.

A: So it’s a really heterogenous group?

AA: Yeah, and they speak in multiple languages, their educational backgrounds really vary. Some of the Ethiopian women I worked with had masters degrees, and some from Nepal were barely 18.

A: Were most of them around the same age?

AA: All different ages. And some had lived in Kuwait for a few years, or for a few months. So they have widely diverse experiences.

A: What do you like to do in your spare time?

AA: I haven’t had much in the last couple of years [laughs]. I love bike riding, I love to walk, and I love pop culture, so I watch ridiculous amounts of TV and movies that would probably surprise folks.

A: What kinds?

AA: Recently I’ve been enjoying “Community.” It’s really sharp and funny. They play on different genres of TV and movies, and they do it really well.

A: Are you working on any research right now?

AA: I’m finishing up my first research project, which is about domestic workers and their conversions. And this past summer I spent a bit of time in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore—and, the summer before that, in Turkey—looking at Islamic charity networks. I’m interested in women-centric charity networks, ones that are run by women, and the kinds of logics that underpin redistribution of economic goods in a charitable mode. So just starting with that, just establishing contacts with people. I also do ethnographic research, which is fundamentally based on establishing close working relationships with people, so this project is going to be multi-cited, so I need to get a head start on that.

A: Do you prefer reading books in English or Arabic? What differences do you find between those two literatures?

AA: I guess there’s a very different sensibility and style. I mean, even between English and French—which are closer linguistically—you see a difference in terms of sentence structures. I actually early on was trained in French, and spoke French better, so I had to learn how to write in English. I guess, similarly, I appreciate different languages, and different literatures in different languages, because there is a different sensibility about language, about writing, in each language. You have to occupy the head-space of each language in order to appreciate the literature.