WORK PROJECTS
My work projects manifest in multiple forms including academic publications, research films, multimodal curation. Below are selected projects in varying stages of development.
SELECTED ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
ISLAMOPHOBIA AS/AND RACISM: UNDERSTANDING EDUCATION AND MUSLIM YOUTH THROUGH THE IMPERIAL OPTIC
June 21, 2021
Abstract: In this article we examine how anti-Muslim racism manifests itself in educational settings. We contend that warfare and militarism in educational contexts should be understood as co-constructed with US forms of racism and racialized imperial violence. Through this article we explore ways in which the US war on terror has normalized militarism not just in the United States, but in the broader public culture of North America. We utilize the concept of the imperial optic (Durrani forthcoming) to elucidate two case studies exploring anti-Muslim racism in schools and society.
UPSETTING THE CANON
April 8, 2019
Excerpt: We are presented with an opportunity every semester to re-evaluate our pedagogy based on the possibility of teaching an anthropology that addresses, critiques, and dismantles contemporary systems of power through a more sophisticated reading of our discipline’s more radical antecedents that have been deliberately relegated to the sidelines.
THE ROTI COLLECTIVE
The Roti Collective is a collaborative digital research project focused on roti, the unleavened flatbread central to global South Asian cooking and food cultures. This project analyzes roti and roti-making to study the intersections of imperial and familial intimacies within global South Asia. The Roti Collective maps the migration of roti and roti-makers across transoceanic histories of migration and colonial displacement. As a collaborative project, I am working with college students and South Asian community members to curate a social media archive and website.
Below is a glimpse at our latest Instagram posts.
Our website is currently in development.
FILM PROJECTS
2013
BEATING AS ONE
This concert-based film "Beating at One" showcases performance by Ancient Vibrations, a NYC-based Rasta band led by Junior Gabo Wedderburn. During summer 2013, Dr. Deborah Thomas, Dr. John L. Jackson Jr., and Junior Gabo Wedderburn led multiple film screening events with Rasta diasporas in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London featuring BAD FRIDAY, a film that focuses on a community of Rastafarians in western Jamaica annually commemorating the 1963 Coral Gardens "incident"--a moment just after independence when the Jamaican government rounded up, jailed and tortured hundreds of Rastafarians. Following each film screening, Ancient Vibrations performed their music and my film collaborator, Arjun Shankar, and I recorded these events. Beating as One is one film that emerged from these events.