Scholars@Duke
Katherine P. Ewing

Katherine P. Ewing

Professor Emerita
Cultural Anthropology
katherine.ewing@duke.edu
Friedl Building 212, Cultual Anthropology Dept, Durham, NC 27708
Columbia University, Departmen, 80 Claremont Ave., Room 103 MC, New York, NY 10027

Selected Publications

The Khwajasara and the Malang: Gender, desire, and the path to God in modern Pakistan

Journal Article History and Anthropology · January 1, 2025 In Pakistan the shared imaginal world of khwajasaras and malangs has been fractured by the divergent ways that each has been taken up in legal and religious discourse within the modern state. Tracing the development of the khwajasara as a secular, transgen ... Full text Cite

The dream of Pakistan and the unIslamic other

Journal Article Psychoanalysis Culture and Society · December 1, 2024 In this article, we consider the idea of the nation as a collective fantasy, an illusion of wholeness that seeks congruence between the nation as a people and the state. In Pakistan, the vision of the nation is based not on ethnic ties but on the idea of I ... Full text Cite

Psychoanalysis, the Sufi, and the Story.

Journal Article Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East · 2022 Cite

Modern Sufis and the State - the Politics of Islam in South Asia and Beyond

Book · 2020 In recent years, Sufism has been held up as a supposedly peaceful alternative to forms of Islam associated with violence, an embodiment of tolerance and pluralism. ... Cite

The Qalandariyya: From the mosque to the ruin in poetry, place, and practice

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Qalandariyya is a troubling and ambivalent presence in the Sufi tradition. This chapter explores the complex interweaving of historical, literary, religious, and political dimensions of the Qalandar. Moving from philology to poetry, from ritual to resistan ... Full text Cite

Idiosyncrasy and the problem of shared understandings: The case of a Pakistani orphan

Journal Article · January 1, 2019 Individuals participate in a social world of shared understandings and activities, yet they organize their experience idiosyncratically. Over the years, anthropologists have put forth a variety of arguments for ignoring the idiosyncrasies, focusing only on ... Full text Cite

The Ungendered Self: Sex Reassignment, The Third Gender, and Gender Fluidity in India."

Chapter · March 22, 2018 This unique volume is about how ordinary people construct political meanings, form political emotions and identities, and become involved in or disengaged from political contests. ... Cite

Anthropology and the Pakistani National Imaginary

Chapter · January 1, 2012 The anthropology of Pakistan has, in many respects, been at the margins of the discipline, just as Pakistan itself lies at the ambiguous border between regions carved out by Western powers in the past century - the Middle East on the west and South Asia (i ... Cite

Oprah, the Rorschach Test

Internet Publication · 2011 Link to item Cite

Naming Our Sexualities: Secular Constraints, Muslim Freedoms

Journal Article Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology · 2011 Cite

Being Muslim and American: South Asian Muslim youth and the war on terror

Chapter · December 1, 2008 IN THIS CHAPTER, we consider some of the responses of Muslim youth growing up in the United States amidst the atmosphere of suspicion associated with the war on terror. We focus on youth from middle class families of South Asian background living in the Ra ... Cite

Being and belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11

Book · December 1, 2008 The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, instantly transformed many ordinary Muslim and Arab Americans into suspected terrorists. In the weeks and months following the attacks, Muslims in the United States faced a frighteningly altered social climate c ... Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Being and Belonging Muslims in the United States Since 9 11 · December 1, 2008 THE ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, had a dramatic, immediate effect on Muslims in the United States. Both the magnitude of the destruction within the borders of the United States and the ensuing war on terror have ... Cite

Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin

Book · January 2008 Featured Publication Cite

Immigrant Identities and Emotion

Chapter · November 26, 2007 The inbetweenness of those who migrate is not easily captured in the models that dominate the anthropology of emotions. This chapter examines situations in which this inbetweenness is foregrounded: the medical clinic, where many migrants seek help in manag ... Full text Cite

"The Muslim Child"

Chapter · 2007 encyclopedia article ... Cite

Between cinema and social work: Diasporic Turkish women and the (dis)pleasures of hybridity

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · May 1, 2006 Against a backdrop of increasingly vocal assertions that Germany's growing Muslim immigrant population is resisting integration through the development of a "parallel society", this article demonstrates how German social policy literature, the news media, ... Full text Cite

Revealing and concealing: Interpersonal dynamics and the negotiation of identity in the interview

Journal Article Ethos · March 1, 2006 With questions of identity negotiation and power now central in anthropology, anthropologists must become more attentive to negotiations in the interview process itself. This article draws together insights from sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, and litera ... Full text Cite

Revealing and Concealing: Interpersonal Dynamics and the Negotiation of Identity, with comments by Dorinne Kondo and Sidney Mintz, and author response.

Journal Article Ethos · February 2006 With questions of identity negotiation and power now central in anthropology, anthropologists must become more attentive to negotiations in the interview process itself. This article draws together insights from sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, and litera ... Cite

Pilgrims of love: the anthropology of a global Sufi cult

Journal Article JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE · September 1, 2005 Link to item Cite

Identity Politics: Turkey

Journal Article · 2005 Cite

Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult, by Pnina Werbner

Journal Article Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2005 Cite

Diasporic dreaming, identity, and self-constitution

Journal Article · December 1, 2003 The effort to understand globalization and the diaspora experience has challenged anthropology's theoretical apparatus. We can no longer understand culture as a system of meanings that constitutes social reality and shapes the experience of individuals. An ... Cite

Between Turkey and Germany: Living Islam in the Diaspora

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · 2003 Cite

Living Islam in the Diaspora: Between Turkey and Germany

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · January 1, 2003 Full text Cite

Visible Islam in Modern Turkey

Journal Article International Journal of Turkish Studies · 2002 Cite

Dream as symptom, dream as myth: A cross-cultural perspective on dream narratives

Journal Article Sleep and Hypnosis · January 1, 2000 Freudian dream analysis pays little attention to a dream's manifest content, except as a starting point for free association. But many dreams have a clear narrative structure, and in many cultures, the manifest content of such dreams is culturally patterne ... Cite

Anthropological Research in Pakistan: A Bibliography

Other American Institute of Pakistan, Occasional Papers · 1997 Cite

Rhetorics of Self-Making.

Journal Article The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · September 1996 Full text Cite

Review of Rhetorics of Self-Making, edited by Debbora Battaglia

Journal Article Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 1996 Cite

Pir

Chapter · 1994 Cite

Dreams from a Saint: Anthropological Atheism and the Temptation to Believe

Journal Article American Anthropologist · January 1, 1994 Full text Cite

Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Margaret Trawick.

Journal Article American Anthropologist · March 1992 Full text Cite

Review of Notes on Love in a Tamil Family by Margaret Trawick

Journal Article American Anthropologist · 1991 Cite

The Sufi as Saint, Curer, an Exorcist in Modern Pakistan

Journal Article Contributions to Asian Studies · 1984 Cite

The Politics of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan

Journal Article Journal of Asian Studies · 1983 Cite

Embodied Metaphor: Playing with Gender in South Asian Sufism

Journal Article Journal of the American Academy of Religion Cite