Atiya Husain

Drawing on the fields of sociology, legal studies, cultural studies, and Black studies, Dr. Atiya Husain’s research program is guided by a fundamental interest in how “race” constitutes a material reality; is an organizing principle in European colonial structures of thought; and is a contested idiom that is claimed and deployed in multiple and often contradictory ways. Dr. Husain’s current stream of research is about race and terrorism.

Under contract with Duke University Press, Dr. Husain’s book manuscript excavates the epistemological, racial, and theological foundations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted program (1950-present). Other recent and forthcoming writings in this stream of research examine counterterrorism in relation to the abolition movement (see: Husain, Atiya. (2021). Deracialization, Dissent, and Terrorism in the FBI’s Most Wanted Program. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 7(2), 208-225; Husain, Atiya. (2020). Terror and Abolition. Boston Review).

In earlier ethnographic research funded by the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Husain studied race and religion in the lives of Muslims in the US. Papers published from this research explore the racial/religious positioning of black and white Muslims; the materialist analysis of anti-Muslim practices found in some black Muslims’ arguments against the conceptualization of ‘Islamophobia;’ and critiques of the concept of racialization (see: Husain, Atiya. (2019). Moving beyond (and back to) the black–white binary: a study of black and white Muslims’ racial positioning in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(4), 589–606); Husain, Atiya. (2020). Official antiracism and the limits of ‘Islamophobia.’ Social Identities).