Aisha Khan

Associate Professor

BIOGRAPHY

Aisha Khan is an anthropologist whose research interests focus on the ways that race and religion intersect in the Atlantic world, particularly in the production of identities and political culture. Her work also is concerned with Asian and African diasporas in the Americas, indenture as a system of labor, and the concept of creolization.

Education

PhD, Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate School

M.A. Anthropology, San Francisco State University

B.A. Anthropology, San Francisco State University

NYU Affiliations

Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Prison Education Program

Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Department of History 

Areas of Research/Interest

Atlantic studies, race and ethnicity, colonialism, racial capitalism, obeah; Islam in the Caribbean, theory and method in diaspora studies, creolization.

Fellowships/Honors

Residential fellowship, Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies

National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship

National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend fellowship

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award.

NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award, College of Arts and Sciences 

NYU Center for the Humanities Faculty Research Fellowship

Grants

Grant-in-Aid Award, NYU Center for the Humanities 

Selected Publications

2021, The Deepest Dye: Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World, Harvard University Press.

"Race and Islam: Doctrine and the Vernacular," Maydan https:// www.themaydan.com/2019/01/race-islam-doctrine-vernacular/ (2019)

"Aftermath: Life and Post-Life in Atlantic Religions," in Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death and Mortuary Rituals in the Caribbean, ed. by Maarit Forde and Yanique Hume (2018)

"Material and Immaterial Bodies: Diaspora Studies and the Problem of Culture, Identity, and Race," Small Axe 48:29-49 (2015); Islam and the Americas (2015).

Islam and the Americas.

Empirical Futures: Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz. 

Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad

Cultural Dynamics, special issue guest editor, “The Life and Work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot."

In press "Aftermath: Life and Post-­Life in Atlantic Religions." In Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death and Mortuary Rituals in the Caribbean.

"Race and Racial Thinking: A View from the Atlantic World," in Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in Global Context, edited by David Rainbow, pp. 77-99

2015 "Material and Immaterial Bodies: Diaspora Studies and the Problem of Culture, Identity, and Race." Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 48:29­49.

"Dark Arts and Diaspora," 2013, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 17(1):40-63

2012 "Islam, Vodou, and the Making of the Afro-Atlantic." New West Indian Guide 86(1-2): 29-54

2009 “'Caucasian', 'Coolie', 'Black', or 'White'? Color and Race in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora." In Shades of Difference: Transnational Perspectives on How and Why Skin Color Matters. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, editor. Pp. 95-113. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

2001 "Journey to the Center of the Earth: The Caribbean as Master Symbol." Cultural Anthropology 16(3):271-302.

2003 "Portraits in the Mirror: Nature, Culture, and Women's Travel Writing in the Caribbean." Women's Writing 10(1).

1997 "Rurality and 'Racial' Landscapes in Trinidad." In Knowing Your Place: Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy. Barbara Ching and Gerald Creed, editors. Pp. 39-69. NY: Routledge,

1994 "Juthaa in Trinidad: Food. Pollution, and Hierarchy in a Caribbean Diaspora Community." American Ethnologist 21(2): 245-269.

1993 "What is 'a Spanish'? Ambiguity and 'Mixed' Ethnicity in Trinidad." In Trinidad Ethnicity, ed. by K. Yelvington. Pp. 180-207. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.



Selected Presentations


2018 "Islam in Haiti, 'Land of Vodou'." Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

2018 "Performance of Shadows: Race as Ritual in the Colonial Caribbean." Center for South Asia, Taub Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Music, Stanford University.

2016 Public keynote address, “The Many Rainbows of Caribbean Heritage: Asian Indenture and Its Stories.” Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW), College of Charleston, South Carolina, and Charleston Carifest (June).

2016 Workshop on “Islam and Religious Identity: The Limits of Definition,” Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations,” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

2016 Symposium on “The Political Biography of the Caribbean and Other Lessons: A Symposium in Honor of Colin A. Palmer.” The Center for the Humanities, City University of New York Graduate Center, NY.

2016 Workshop on South Asian Diasporas and the American “Nation.” Dhar India Studies Program and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

2015 Panel chair and commentator, conference on “Islam in Global Perspective.” The Organization for Islamic Area Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan; the Asia­Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur; and the Malaysia Arab Crossroads and History Programs at NYU Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi.

2014 Keynote Address, "A 'Race of Angels' or a Soaring of Spirits? Thinking Through Diaspora." The Windrush Roundtable annual conference, Department of Black Studies, University of California Santa Barbara.

Current News/Projects

Updated February 2018

I am spending January 2018 to December 2018 on a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, working on my current book project, Sacred Sacrilege.