Wearing the Niqab

Anna Piela is Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University, USA. Her first monograph, titled Muslim Women Online: Faith and Identity in Virtual Age, explored debates held by Muslim women who interpreted Islamic texts and discussed them on e-forums. Piela is interested in the notion of agentic textual and visual self-representations of Muslim women. She has worked as a research consultant for the Muslim Women's Council in Bradford. Her articles have appeared in New Media & Society, Hawwa, The Muslim World and Contemporary Islam. She has written about Islam-related issues for Times Higher Education.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Mainstream media representations of women who wear the niqab and women's responses2. Religious framing of the niqab3. Translating the niqab for secular audiences4. Intersections of Islamophobia, racism, and sexism and coping strategies5. The digital niqabosphere as a hypermediated third spaceConclusionsBibliographyIndex

Wearing the Niqab is marketed as the first in-depth examination of niqabi women in the USA, and to my knowledge this is true. It would work well in undergraduate courses on religion and media, showing students how to critically analyze media images and content. It also offers a good addition to the abundant scholarship on Islam and gender, making it well suited for a variety of religion courses.