Scoot Over

What happens when women are excluded, silenced and marginalized within religious communities? In the inaugural episode of Scoot Over, Slate journalist Aymann Ismail explores the trouble with rooting out gender exclusion in a group that faces existential threats from outsiders, and what inclusivity in religious institutions and communities looks like. Melissa Weisz is an actor, producer, writer and consultant with a focus of giving underrepresented individuals and communities a voice. Melissa ...

Aymann is joined by two Jewish scholars to discuss how memory - a personal version of history passed down from generation to generation - shapes identity. Emmanuel Kattan is Director of the Alliance Program, a partnership between Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Ecole Polytechnique. A native of Montreal, Emmanuel studied politics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and earned a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He currently teac...

History is written by the victors is a famous phrase, but rarely do we dig into what it actually means and its consequences for how we understand who we are. Aymann speaks with two academics who are teaching the rest of us to resist the neat and convenient historical narratives we learned in school . Hussein Rashid, PhD, is a freelance academic based in New York City, on the land of the Lenape people. His work focuses on religion in US popular culture, and Shi’i theologies of justice. He was ...

A plus-sized hijabi model and a media professor join Aymann to explore the nuance of the mediated world of body positivity and confidence culture. Leah Vernon is an international Hijabi social media influencer, award-winning author, motivational speaker, educator, and content creator. Her book, UNASHAMED: musings of a Fat, Black Muslim is out now. https://www.instagram.com/lvernon2000/ Professor Shani Orgad is based in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economi...

Aymann welcomes two incredibly talented and determined female artists to discuss the struggle to be seen, heard, and accepted as outsiders in their respective spaces. Claudia Gold, who for years was known to us as simply CLAW MONEY, is a pioneering graffiti writer, artist, curator, brand director, stylist, costume designer, fashion editor, historian, marketing and branding expert, author, agitator, mentor, and gatekeeper/arbiter of downtown NYC culture. She lives and works in NYC... St...