The Hijab Project: Troubling Conceptions of Agency and Piety through Community-Engaged Art Making

This article focuses on The Hijab Project, a collective art exhibit that was created by a Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) collective to address assumptions about Muslim women and girls who veil. The art project used data from a survey collect at Mount Top High, a suburban public high school in Utah, to inform the need for a public intervention that addressed issues of Islamophobia during a time of contentious political climate in the United States. Using transnational feminism to think about concepts of agency and piety, the article contends that, despite traditional framing of Muslim women as passive victims, through their artwork, the girls in this research group prove that religiosity and choice are not dichotomous. Lastly, this piece argues that The Hijab Project represents a successful example of critical community-engaged scholarship by demonstrating that partnerships between community members and universities can be a force for civic engagement and social change.

Automated summary

This article introduces a collective art exhibit called The Hijab Project, created by a CPAR collective to address assumptions about Muslim women who wear the hijab. Through survey data and artwork, it demonstrates that religiosity and choice are not mutually exclusive, and highlights the importance of university-community partnerships.