Public Scholarship

I am committed to reimagining how capacious academic scholarship can be in addressing contemporary social issues. You can read my most recent piece, titled “‘In the Name Above All Names’: A Girlboss Builds Her Empire on Sand,” which is part of a collaboration between the Smithsonian National Museum for American History and the University of Alabama examining the links between religion and the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.

Currently, I am a member of Union Theological Seminary’s 2022-2024 “Religion and Racial Justice: Expanding the Moral Imaginary Through Film” cohort, which brings together scholars, faith leaders, activists, and artists of color to explore films centering religion and racial justice through a series of public conversations.

In 2021, I was selected as a Public Scholarship Training Fellow through the Sacred Writes program. I also served as an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Fellow during my graduate training at UNC Chapel Hill. Here, I worked primarily on state outreach and community college collaborations for the Humanities on the Road initiative at Carolina Public Humanities. This division endeavored to build and strengthen diverse strategic collaborations with schools across North Carolina, especially among underserved populations, by planning and executing public humanities events throughout the state.

I regularly give public talks at universities, high schools, and middle schools on a variety of issues related to Islam. These range from topics like religion and contemporary South Asian politics, to anti-Muslim hostility and Islamophobia in the United States, to the racial and sexual diversity within American Muslim communities. Please reach out directly if you’d like me to speak at your school or event.