RSVP: https://myumi.ch/8Jx93
Date: November 4, 4:30 PM ET
Location: 555 Weiser Hall (5th Floor), 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor MI

Join the Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC) on November 4, 2026, at 4:30 PM in 555 Weiser Hall, University of Michigan, for a Qahwah & Authors book series author talk on LANDING IN PLACE, Sherine Hamdy's coming-of-age graphic novel about Anisa, a second-generation Egyptian-Muslim American college girl navigating identity, culture, religion, and family.

Balancing humor with family tragedy and moments of joy amid political trauma, LANDING IN PLACE weaves together personal and global histories, spanning the Suez Crisis of 1956, the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and contemporary global protests for Palestinian rights. Through Anisa’s experiences as a young, hijab-wearing Muslim woman, Hamdy explores how migration to and diaspora in the United States, and neocolonialism and foreign intervention in Egypt and the Global South shape individual lives and family histories. LANDING IN PLACE begins as a story shaped by migrant and exile frustration and external assumptions about Muslim women, and evolves into one that celebrates Muslim identity and cultures, and the power of finding one’s voice.

This event is brought to you by the University of Michigan Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC) and the Arab and Muslim American Studies (AMAS) Program in the Department of American Culture.

About Sherine Hamdy: Sherine Hamdy is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California Irvine, where she joined the faculty in 2017. She was previously a tenured faculty member at Brown University since 2006. She has published widely on the themes of Muslim medical ethics, the political economic distribution of disease in Egypt, and the role of physicians in the Arab spring uprisings. Her first book Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt was published by the University of California Press in 2012. Hamdy also inaugurated the University of Toronto Press graphic novel series ethnoGRAPHIC with her co-authored graphic novel Lissa: A Story of Friendship, Medical Promise, and Revolution, which combines panel-to-panel comics narration with her medical anthropology research. In 2026, Penguin Random House published Hamdy's graphic novel Landing in Place, illustrated by Myra El Mir. Hamdy currently serves as Series Editor for the University of Toronto Press ethnoGRAPHIC series, and encourages academics to adopt multiple media forms in their distribution of research findings.

For more events from the Global Islamic Studies Center at the University of Michigan, please visit ii.umich.edu/islamicstudies.


If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange. Email Contact: [email protected]