Breaking Down Patriarchy

Amy is joined by Dr. Bahar Jalali to discuss the history of Afghanistan and how the country's past, as well as global politics, shape the lives of Afghan women today.Dr. Bahar Jalali teaches the history of the Modern Middle East. Her area of expertise is Afghanistan. She focuses on modernization and women’s rights in the twentieth century under the Old Regime. She is currently finishing a manuscript on the Decade of Democracy from 1963-1973 in Afghanistan when an urban educated intelligentsia spearheaded democratic reforms and a liberal Constitution. Born in Afghanistan, she fled the country as a child after the Soviet invasion. In 2009, she returned to Afghanistan to work at the newly opened American University in Kabul where she taught History of Afghanistan and founded the first Gender Studies program in the history of the country. She recently started an online protest campaign calling for protection of women’s rights and preservation of cultural heritage in Afghanistan. This campaign has received extensive coverage in the international press. It has also triggered wide- ranging discussions on protection of human rights and cultural heritage in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. 

Amy is joined by Dr. Afiya S. Zia to discuss her book Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy and explore the achievements and challenges of Pakistani feminists.Dr. Afiya Zia is a feminist scholar who has taught Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Habib University in Pakistan. She is the author of three books, has authored over a dozen peer-reviewed essays in scholarly publications, and she's contributed chapters for over ten edited volumes, including an award-winning publication on human rights. She's currently a professor at Wesleyan University.

Amy is joined by Léa Namouni to discuss the anthology Women Rising: In and Beyond The Arab Spring and the work of women activists and organizers in the Arab World. Léa Namouni was born in Paris, France and lived there until the age of five when her family relocated to the state of New Jersey. She holds a BA in International Relations from Boston University and will attending Columbia Law School as of September 2023 studying international law.

Amy is joined by Dr. Zahra Ayubi to discuss her book Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family and Society and begin this season's exploration of gender relations in the Muslim world. Dr. Zahra Ayubi is a scholar of gender in pre-modern and contemporary Islamic ethics. She specializes in feminist philosophy approaches to the Muslim intellectual tradition. Her work includes a serious look at masculinity and gendered childhood, in addition to studying more traditional gender topics such as constructs of femininity, women's experiences, marriage, divorce, sexuality, and feminism. She has published on gendered concepts of ethics, justice, and religious authority, and on Muslim feminist thought and American Muslim women's experiences. Her book, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family and Society, was published by Columbia University Press in 2019. In it, Ayubi calls for a philosophical turn in the study of gender and Islam based on resources for gender equality that are unlocked by feminist engagement with the Islamic ethical tradition. She's currently taking that philosophical turn in her second book project, Women as Humans: Life, Death, and Gendered Being in Islamic Medical Ethics, which was supported by a three-year grant from the Greenwall Foundation's Faculty Scholars Program. The project is a textual and ethnographic study of gender and gendered experiences in Muslim biomedical ethics. Zahra Ayubi is an associate professor of religion at Dartmouth College, where she started in 2015 upon completion of her PhD in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the current president of the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics

Amy is joined by Stacey Harkey to discuss How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones and focus on the experience of being Black and queer in America.Born in Dallas, Texas, Stacey Harkey considers himself to be a Southerner to the core. After graduating with a degree in public relations from Brigham Young University, he was a writer and actor for the sketch comedy TV show, Studio C. He is currently a personal trainer, a corporate DEI consultant, and owns a media company called JK Studios. Stacey is a firm believer in the power of an embarrassing moment, a burnt meal, and an extremely difficult challenge.

Amy is joined by Dr. Christena Cleveland to discuss her book God is a Black Woman and unpack our assumptions about divinity, gender, and race.Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate people’s spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation.A weaver of Black liberation and the sacred feminine, Dr. Cleveland integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. She recently completed her third full-length book, God is a Black Woman (HarperOne), which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine.Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress. Though Dr. Cleveland loves scholarly inquiry, she is also a student of embodied wisdom. She recently completed the Art & So

Amy is joined by Kylee Shepherd to discuss We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi as well as Womanism and Feminism on the African continent.Kylee Shepherd is a bi-racial student from Bakersfield, California. She is currently a psychology major at Brigham Young University and plans to be an elementary school teacher. She is a founding member of The Black Menaces, an activist group interviewing students and faculty on college campuses with questions that start conversations about racial issues, biases, stereotypes, and more. In her spare time, Kylee likes to the movies, play with her dog, and take naps.

Amy is joined by Channel Achenbach to discuss Daughters of Anowa by Mercy Amba Oduyoye and explore history and gender relations in Ghana.Channel Achenbach hales from San Antonio, TX and is an advocate for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." She is a seeker of freedom, justice, accountability, love, compassion, mercy, diversity and awareness. She pursues opportunities to discuss racial disparities and the achievable resolutions for unity, diversity and solidarity within the membership in and out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Channel has been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for more than 30 years, leaving following her mission. Channel is married with seven kids and one grandson.

Amy is joined by writer and intellectual OluTimehin Kukoyi to discuss The Invention of Women by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and explore the concept of gender in Nigeria.OluTimehin Kukoyi (née Adegbeye) is an award-winning writer, speaker and public intellectual whose work focuses on love and freedom. She is known for her insightful analyses of issues relating to feminism, gender, sexualities and pro-poor urbanisation.Her TED talk on urban inclusion “Who Belongs in a City?“, delivered at TEDGlobal 2017, was acclaimed as one of the most notable talks of 2017. OluTimehin has addressed audiences on four continents, and has worked with a wide variety of corporate and civil society organisations in her home country of Nigeria and internationally.Ms Kukoyi was awarded the third Gerald Kraak Prize for her essay, ‘Mothers and Men‘, which is now available in print in the Jacana Media anthology, ‘The Heart of the Matter‘. She has been published online by a range of journalistic, development and cultural platforms, and until its closure was a staff writer at The Correspondent. Her work has been translated into 26 languages, with selected publications incorporated into academic curricula in various countries.OluTimehin is an alumna of the inaugural Writing for Social Justice workshop organised by AWDF in collaboration with FEMRITE (Uganda, 2014), the Farafina Trust Creative Writing workshop (Nigeria, 2015), and the BRITDOC Queer Impact Producers Lab (USA, 2017), among other fellowships. She lives in Lagos with her family.

Amy explores the history of Liberia and Women's Mass Action for Peace through the written words of one of her heroes, Leymah Gbowee.