Samina Gul Ali

Samina Gul Ali is an Assistant Professor of English at Kean University. Her research focuses on contemporary literary and cultural productions by Muslim women in the United States. Samina's current book project, titled "Articulations of Islamic Feminist Identity in Post-9/11 Muslim American Narratives," examines how the power of storytelling, through the depiction of minute, small details of ordinary living and existence, can present a practice of contemporary Muslim womanhood that interrogates constrictive understandings of gender, race, religion, and ethnicity. Her research is invested in how Muslim women enact identity formation—through portrayals of spirituality, cross-racial solidarity, and transnational community-building—as a liberatory and decolonial feminist praxis.Ali earned her PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Miami. Her graduate research has been recognized by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and the Marilyn Yarbrough Teaching/Dissertation Fellowship. Before joining the tenure-track, Samina was an Equity in Action Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Kean University. Her most recent publication, "Swadhin, Muslim, and Proud: Lexicons of Queerness Beyond Nation-State Borders in Tanaïs’s Bright Lines," is forthcoming in MELUS Journal.