Peer Pressure to Act Against Their Beliefs

        

Professor Shabana Mir

By Michael Nelson, MA Candidate in European Union Studies

After having attended many scholarly lectures, it was a unique experience to attend a CSAMES Brown Bag Lecture that included a professor discussing college drinking norms and students “hooking up” and so on. The comments were part of a larger dialogue in Professor Shabana Mir’s lecture, “Muslim American Undergraduates in College Leisure Culture: Conformity, Resistance and Self-Essentialism” on March 12. Dr. Mir interviewed 26 Muslim American women in college at George Washington University and Georgetown University during the 2002-2003 academic year about their leisure activities.

A big focus of the presentation was the power of American undergraduate culture in terms of drinking alcohol and dating. Most college students feel a pressure to “become an adult” by experiencing the freedom to binge drink and date. However, many Muslim students do not believe that drinking should be a part of one’s everyday life, and dating should be platonic at most. Many students interviewed by Dr. Mir indicated that their non-Muslim friends found it “weird” that the Muslim students didn’t drink and date.

 In an effort to not stick out so much, many Muslim undergrads felt obliged to give half-answers to questions about drinking and dating, as well as sometimes do things they didn’t want to do. For example, when asked if she had ever dated someone, one student said something along the lines of “not yet.” This answer implies that the student could be interested in dating but just hadn’t at that point. Another student signed a petition to allow alcohol at one special event on a dry college campus, leaving her with a feeling of guilt later.

 During the Q&A, I asked the speaker about how academic expectations at these two universities played a role in the overall leisure culture. Since George Washington and Georgetown are both top-tier competitive schools, I thought that students might be too busy with their studies to party as much as students at slightly less competitive colleges. Dr. Mir brought up a good point that there is a feeling of “work hard, play hard” at almost all colleges in the United States. Dr. Mir shared the funny anecdote that most students she has spoken with always think that their college is the number one party school in the country.

As someone who didn’t drink as an undergraduate student myself, I can attest to the fact that the University of Illinois offers students many other activities to do besides party. For incoming students, there is a dorm that is for people who commit to being drug and alcohol free, and that dorm plans many fun activities to do instead. There are also reasonably priced concerts and theater performances, as well as over 1,000 registered student organizations and campus recreation facilities. UIUC has a very active Muslim Student Association. While U of I definitely has a party culture, especially with the annual Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, I believe that there is also a general acceptance of those who do not wish to party.

Food, Frailty and "Fake Brahmins"

Sudeshna Banerjee expounds on Bengali middle-class fears in late colonial Calcutta.

On the afteroon March 7, Sudeshna Banerjee, Associate Professor of History at Jadavpur University, Calcuutta, India, gave a special lecture entitled "Food, Frailty and "Fake Brahmins": Bengali Middle-Class Fears of Failed Hegemony in Late Colonial Calcutta.

Dr. Banerjee discussed the ways in which a dominant class, in the grips of a fear that its hegemony is failing, comes to perceive numerous ‘others’ along all imaginable ethnic divides. According to Banerjee, the class perceives its rightful space as usurped and its body invaded or ‘polluted’ by the ethnic ‘other’. And this perception may be reinforced if the hegemonic drive of the dominant group is in any way rendered vulnerable by its own self-perception of frailty.

During her talk, Dr. Banerjee referred to the Bengali Hindu middle class and its discourse of the ‘non-Bengali’ in relation to the city of Calcutta.  According to Dr. Banerjee, this group had expected to hegemonize the rest of people in India in its professed role as the natural leaders of the (anti-colonial) nation. However, the developments of the period from the mid-1910s to the 1940s somehow bred a premonition among the class that this hegemony was failing.  

Dr. Banerjee’s talk explained the way this premonition reflected in the class’s feeling of being spatially dislodged by the ‘non-Bengali’, even while it somehow translated into the representation of certain specific ‘non-Bengali’ occupational groups as invading, enfeebling and ‘polluting’ the Bengali middle-class body.

Persian Music Lecture and Demonstration Delights Ears

Massoud Rostam-Abadi demonstrates how to play the santour.

On the evening of March 7,  Bruno Nettl, Professor Emeritus of Music and Anthropology and Massoud Rostam-Abadi, Principal Chemical Engineer Honorary at the Prairie Research Institute, formed a tag-team to explain and demonstrate several aspects of classical Persian music.  

Click the video to hear Massoud play!