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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory

Medina by the Bay Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival

Medina by the Bay Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival
September 2023

From the Black Power movement and state surveillance to Silicon Valley and gentrification, Medina by the Bay examines how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive and flourish within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics. Weaving expansive histories, peoples, and geographies together in an ethnographic screenplay of cinematic scenes, Maryam Kashani demonstrates how sociopolitical forces and geopolitical agendas shape Muslim ways of knowing and being. Throughout, Kashani argues that contemporary Islam emerges from the specificities of the Bay Area, from its landscapes and infrastructures to its Muslim liberal arts college, mosques, and prison courtyards. Theorizing the Medina by the Bay as a microcosm of socioeconomic, demographic, and political transformations in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, Kashani resituates Islam as liberatory and abolitionist theory, theology, and praxis for all those engaged in struggle.

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory

100 English Building

608 South Wright Street

Urbana, Illinois 61801

Email: Unit-for-Criticism@illinois.edu

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