Papers by Mirela Cufurovic
Female Pioneers from Ancient Egypt and the Middle East On the Influence of History on Gender Psychology, 2021
The language of trauma has been used by many to explain what happens to individuals and to the co... more The language of trauma has been used by many to explain what happens to individuals and to the collectivities to which they belong. Some of these traumatic experiences stem from interpersonal violence, such as sexual and physical abuse or domestic violence. Others may stem from witnessing interpersonal violence and victimisation, such as witnessing or being a victim of a serious accident, war, a terror attack, or experiencing the loss of a loved one. Regardless of its cause, trauma, whether individualistic or collective, arises from the experience of pain and suffering post ‘an extraordinary event’ so disruptive that it triggers an emotional response and public attention. This chapter will situate the experiences of trauma felt by the surviving Muslim women victims of the Christchurch terror attack that occurred on March 15, 2019, within the scope of collective trauma theory. We do this by examining two types of collective trauma unique to the Christchurch experience: collective trauma through personal experience and collective trauma through empathy. Although our focus is on the Muslim women victims and survivors of the attack, we also show how ‘meaning-making’ processes such as the media and the New Zealand government helped define the type of pain and suffering felt by the victims. We discuss how this was translated into a broader form of collective suffering whereby the Muslim community, the community of New Zealand, and those abroad felt victimised by the event on a traumatic level.
Religions, 2021
Muslim youth have been under scrutiny over the last two decades from a radicalisation and counter... more Muslim youth have been under scrutiny over the last two decades from a radicalisation and countering violent extremism lens. This bias has largely carried itself to research conducted on Muslim youth in the West. This article undertakes a systematic review and analysis of literature conducted on Muslim youth in the West and in Australia in the last two decades since 11 September 2001. The body of literature in this field can be grouped under three main themes: (1) the impact of terrorism policies and discourse on Muslim youth and their disengaged identities, (2) the relationship between religion (Islam) and civic engagement of Muslim youth, and (3) Muslim youth as active citizens. An important conclusion of this review is that most of the research is dated. There have been significant changes in the development of youth as they quickly evolve and adapt. The systematic review of literature exposed a number of gaps in the research: the current literature ignores generic adolescent factors and external social factors other than Islam that also influence Muslim youth; studies that examine both online and traditional activism and volunteering space are needed to understand the dynamics of change and shift; research needs to focus on Muslim youth who were born and raised in Australia rather than focus only on migrant youth; the ways some Muslim youth use their unique sense of identity as Australian Muslims to become successful citizens engaged in positive action is not known; how Muslim youth use avenues other than their faith to express themselves in civic engagement and their commitment to society is underexplored; it is not known the degree to which bonding networks influence the identity formation and transformation of Muslim youth; there is no research done to examine how adult–youth partnership is managed in organisations that successfully integrate youth in their leadership; there is a need to include Australian Muslim youth individual accounts of their active citizenship; there is a need to understand the process of positive Muslim youth transformations as a complement to the current focus on the radicalisation process. Addressing these gaps will allow a more complete understanding of Muslim youth in the West and inform educational and social policies in a more effective manner.
Public History Review, 2018
Historical films have been subject to controversy and criticism within the discipline of history ... more Historical films have been subject to controversy and criticism within the discipline of history upon the rise of popular interest in new and innovative forms of historical representation. The five to seven years between the release of Gladiator (2000) and Rome (2005-2007) saw an upsurge of historical films focusing on the ‘epic’: the spectacular, monumental and immersive periods of history that exude a mix of historical reality and speculative fiction. This paper argues that it is not historical accuracy or film as historical evidence that matters, but the historical questions and debates that film raises for its audience and the historical profession regarding the past it presents and its implication on history. Such questions and debates base themselves around the extent to which filmmakers are able to interpret history through images and what kind of historical understandings it hopes to achieve. This paper analyses the complexity of public history through a comparative study of reviews on five online message boards, such as IMBD, Amazon, TV.com and Metacritic, relating to HBO’s Rome – chosen due to its unique ability of igniting historiographical debate by presenting history as an accident, thus allowing audiences to question and reinterpret the outcome of historical events.
Australian Journal of Islamic Studies, 2017
The Balkan region has left scholars perplexed over its origin
and definition, to which they have... more The Balkan region has left scholars perplexed over its origin
and definition, to which they have provided different answers. This
challenge stems from the region’s long history; a history where
civilisations met, collided, and even merged leading to a dynamic,
multilayered region. However, one civilisation stuck with the Balkans
centuries after its demise – the Ottoman Empire. This Ottoman legacy
marked the Balkans as “the ‘other’ within” Europe at the turn of the
nineteenth century when scholars and travel writers began to attach
political connotations to the name. Being referred to as ‘Turkey-inEurope,’
the identity of the Balkans became premised on the dichotomy
of East versus West, in which the Balkans represented the East – the
Orient – purely because of its Ottoman history. It is for this reason that
the Balkans, more than any other geographical appellation, conjure up
pejorative connotations. So much so, that many tend to either avoid the
term altogether – including the Balkan nation-states – or use an
ostensibly neutral term like ‘South-east Europe’ to refer to the region.
And so, the question remains: who are the Balkans?
This paper examines the ground between historical reality and Western
imagination regarding the Balkans by focusing on Balkan identity as
conflicted between East and West, and explores the extent to which
Balkan scholarship has ‘Orientalised’ the region, whereupon the Balkan
nation-states began to disassociate themselves from the Balkan label to
appear more ‘European.’ The paper will argue it is because of this
complexity – the divide between East and West – that the Balkan region
is, paradoxically, fully known yet wholly unknowable: known to
Europe, yet distant from it due to its Oriental past and tendencies.
Chicago Journal of History, 2016
Thesis Chapters by Mirela Cufurovic
Masters Thesis, 2018
This dissertation examines how Australian female Muslim sports celebrities negotiate their identi... more This dissertation examines how Australian female Muslim sports celebrities negotiate their identity as women, as Muslims, and as sports participants in Australian sport, and how their multiple identities are shaped and reshaped by a collective remembering of them as the ‘unfit-other’ in sport. Although the bodies of Muslim women are mediated through different ideological interpretations of Islam and within the political arrangement of Australia and its sporting industry, three particular Australian Muslim sportswomen – Assmaah Helal, Aman Karra Hassan, and Bianca Elmir – show how their experience of sport involves a number of choices and assertions about their own bodies and identities that can be either personal or political, or both at one and the same time. These sportswomen challenge the way memory and identity politics play out in Australia’s sporting culture by negotiating their identity in opposition to misogynistic and orientalist trajectories that surround them and their complex multiple identities. One way they do this is by turning to social media platforms, like Instagram, to present themselves as active, visible and autonomous sportswomen in they own way and on their own terms.
History Honours Thesis, 2016
This thesis examines how the Muslim population of Bosnia-Hercegovina developed a distinct Bosniak... more This thesis examines how the Muslim population of Bosnia-Hercegovina developed a distinct Bosniak identity under the leadership of Alija Izetbegović, from the aftermath of WWII until the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. As a young Muslim intellectual, Izetbegović revealed how Islamic expression, whether it be national or religious, challenged the socialist Yugoslav state’s political organisation by highlighting the contradictions in its nationalities policy. More broadly, his writings raised the question of what it meant to be a nation with two names, thereby pointing to the entanglement of national and religious identities in the formation of nationhood. This thesis explores how Izetbegović’s opposition to the Communist regime contributed to the rise in Bosniak national consciousness as a result of the dissemination of his manifesto Islamska Deklaracija (1970). Although the Bosniak nation existed prior to his political activism, it was the combination of Izetbegović’s Islamic ideology and Communist ideals that indirectly led to the affirmation of Bosniak identity. From the 1950s to 1980s, as Bosnian Muslim intellectuals pressed for their recognition as a constituent nation equal to Serbs and Croats, Bosniak identity gained a sharper outline – and when it did re-emerge, it did so as a form of disengagement from Serbian and Croatian nationalisms.
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Papers by Mirela Cufurovic
and definition, to which they have provided different answers. This
challenge stems from the region’s long history; a history where
civilisations met, collided, and even merged leading to a dynamic,
multilayered region. However, one civilisation stuck with the Balkans
centuries after its demise – the Ottoman Empire. This Ottoman legacy
marked the Balkans as “the ‘other’ within” Europe at the turn of the
nineteenth century when scholars and travel writers began to attach
political connotations to the name. Being referred to as ‘Turkey-inEurope,’
the identity of the Balkans became premised on the dichotomy
of East versus West, in which the Balkans represented the East – the
Orient – purely because of its Ottoman history. It is for this reason that
the Balkans, more than any other geographical appellation, conjure up
pejorative connotations. So much so, that many tend to either avoid the
term altogether – including the Balkan nation-states – or use an
ostensibly neutral term like ‘South-east Europe’ to refer to the region.
And so, the question remains: who are the Balkans?
This paper examines the ground between historical reality and Western
imagination regarding the Balkans by focusing on Balkan identity as
conflicted between East and West, and explores the extent to which
Balkan scholarship has ‘Orientalised’ the region, whereupon the Balkan
nation-states began to disassociate themselves from the Balkan label to
appear more ‘European.’ The paper will argue it is because of this
complexity – the divide between East and West – that the Balkan region
is, paradoxically, fully known yet wholly unknowable: known to
Europe, yet distant from it due to its Oriental past and tendencies.
Thesis Chapters by Mirela Cufurovic
and definition, to which they have provided different answers. This
challenge stems from the region’s long history; a history where
civilisations met, collided, and even merged leading to a dynamic,
multilayered region. However, one civilisation stuck with the Balkans
centuries after its demise – the Ottoman Empire. This Ottoman legacy
marked the Balkans as “the ‘other’ within” Europe at the turn of the
nineteenth century when scholars and travel writers began to attach
political connotations to the name. Being referred to as ‘Turkey-inEurope,’
the identity of the Balkans became premised on the dichotomy
of East versus West, in which the Balkans represented the East – the
Orient – purely because of its Ottoman history. It is for this reason that
the Balkans, more than any other geographical appellation, conjure up
pejorative connotations. So much so, that many tend to either avoid the
term altogether – including the Balkan nation-states – or use an
ostensibly neutral term like ‘South-east Europe’ to refer to the region.
And so, the question remains: who are the Balkans?
This paper examines the ground between historical reality and Western
imagination regarding the Balkans by focusing on Balkan identity as
conflicted between East and West, and explores the extent to which
Balkan scholarship has ‘Orientalised’ the region, whereupon the Balkan
nation-states began to disassociate themselves from the Balkan label to
appear more ‘European.’ The paper will argue it is because of this
complexity – the divide between East and West – that the Balkan region
is, paradoxically, fully known yet wholly unknowable: known to
Europe, yet distant from it due to its Oriental past and tendencies.