FAU’s Women’s Studies Center is hosting a lecture series featuring Dr. Fatima Amrani, a Fulbright scholar from Fes University in Morocco. Amrani is visiting FAU as part of the Fulbright Program “Direct Access to the Muslim World,” which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Dr. Amrani will spend six weeks at FAU, speaking at a total of eight lectures. Her topics vary from “Gender Equity in Islam,” “Islam and Sexuality Education” and “Women and the Harem.” She discusses the hardships and clichí©s that many Muslim and Arab women face on a daily basis and how untruthful the media has been in illustrating their ways of life.

Dr. Josephine Beoku-Betts, an associate professor for the Women’s Studies Center at FAU, says Amrani’s lectures dispel the many stereotypes that surround Muslim countries.

“It is a way to bring people from Arab and Muslim countries to teach us,” she says. “We [Americans] don’t know – we generalize and see them as fundamentalists.”

She says that Amrani educates listeners by detailing the studies of women from Arab and Muslim countries, showing that what the media portrays of those countries is not completely accurate.

Beoku-Betts encourages all students to attend Amrani’s lectures. “It is important for students to be educated and enlightened. It opens us up to Muslim cultures and their lifestyles.”

The Fulbright Program awards scholars from Muslim countries the resources to visit American universities in order to promote an understanding of Islam.

If you missed Dr. Amrani in October, she has two final lectures this month before she returns to Morocco. On

Nov. 15, Dr. Amrani will be speaking at the Delray Beach Public Library at 2 p.m., and at 7 p.m. she will host her final lecture at Planned Parenthood in Boca Raton.

For information about the lectures and Dr. Amrani, please contact the Women’s Studies Center at (561) 297-3865 or [email protected]