ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — In honor of Women’s History Month, the St. Bonaventure University Women’s Studies program, partnered with the Diversity Action Committee, is sponsoring a presentation titled “Women’s Status in Islam.”
The 7 p.m. presentation will be given on Thursday, March 13, by Dr. Doaa Adel Kandil, a Cleveland State University lecturer and scholar-in-residence whose areas of expertise include Middle Eastern history, women in Islam, feminism in Egypt, Islamic culture and civilization and Egyptian history.
The presentation will be held in Dresser Auditorium of the John J. Murphy Professional Building. It is free and open to the public.
Kandil’s lecture will discuss the advent of Islam as a turning point in women’s history. “Islam had honored women and highly elevated their status; nevertheless, it is always unfairly accused of repressing them,” Kandil said.
The presentation will examine women’s place, rights and status in Islam in order to what Kandil hopes will “challenge those wide-held misconceptions about Muslim women and construct a new outlook toward them,” she said.
Kandil is a Fulbright Scholar, part of a highly regarded international association that supports the field of international educational and cultural exchange, and also works to promote policies that foster U.S. leadership and engagement in the world.
An Egyptian native, Kandil is a graduate of Helwan University, located in Cairo, Egypt, where she also taught for 14 years prior to relocating to Cleveland in 2007.