Introduction

Seven years ago, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) published a roundtable on feminist discourses within Islamic studies featuring reflections by Asma Barlas, amina wadud, Karen Bauer, Kecia Ali, Aysha Hidayatullah, YaSiin Rahmaan, and Fatima Seedat.1 The roundtable offered probing discussions of feminist and gender-based approaches in Islamic studies broadly. Inspired by this prior JFSR exchange, a dozen scholars with expertise in gender and qurʾanic studies collaborated on a roundtable at the International Qurʾanic Studies Association (IQSA) 2022 conference in Palermo, Italy, that considered influential and promising theoretical and methodological approaches for gender-informed research in qurʾanic studies. Contributions to the roundtable attend to various dimensions of the Qurʾan by turning to classical exegesis, aesthetic theory, disability studies, literary criticism, and decolonial standpoints, among other promising approaches for gender-based research in qurʾanic studies. As Yasmin Amin summarizes in this roundtable, the contributors advance "frameworks for critical reading, methods for challenging subjectivity and methodological rigidity, strategies for engaging with qurʾanic interpretive traditions, and avenues for conducting rigorous philological, grammatical, rhetorical, and structural analyses" (75). The reflections that follow continue this conversation.

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