American Muslim Women and Cross-Gender Interaction on Campus

Abstract

This article is based on a study of American Muslim undergraduate women’s identity construction via gendered behavior in university spaces. I conducted the study in 2002-03 at two private East Coast universities. My research questions centered upon the religious, ethnic, gender, and cultural/racial identities of American Muslim female undergraduates. I was also interested in the nature of pluralism at American college campuses; I believed that an interesting test of this pluralism would be to see how hospitable it was to the development of American Muslim women’s identities.