From Muslim Cool To Umi’s Archive: A Conversation with Su’Ad Abdul Khabeer

Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s talk will be part prose and part performance, pushing the conversation on Black Muslims beyond studies of specific Muslim communities to think about Black Islam as something to “think” with. She explores what the Black Muslim experience – belief, cultural practice and intellectual thought -offers theoretically, methodologically and for political praxis-within and outside the academy.

Dr. Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist who uses anthropology and performance to explore the intersections of race and popular culture. Su’ad is currently an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan and received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University. She is also a graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed the Islamic Studies diploma program of the Institute at Abu Nour University (Damascus). Her latest work, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU Press 2016), is an ethnography on Islam and hip hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the US. Abdul Khabeer’s written work on Islam and hip hop is accompanied by her performance ethnography, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life. Sampled is a one-woman solo performance designed to present and represent her research and findings to diverse audiences as part of her commitment to public scholarship. In line with this commitment she leads Sapelo Square, the first website dedicated to the comprehensive documentation and analysis of the Black US American Muslim experience.

This talk is cosponsored by the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, UNC Women and Gender Studies Department, Carolina Women’s Center, Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Carolina Seminar for Transnational and Global Modern History, Duke Religious Studies Department, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities.

This talk is open to faculty members, staff, and graduate students only.