Faculty Experts
Carol W.N. Fadda
Biography and Research Interests
Carol W.N. Fadda grew up in Beirut, Lebanon where she earned her B.A. and M.A. from the American University of Beirut. She graduated from Purdue University in 2006 with a Ph.D. in contemporary American Literature. Her research interests in Arab and Muslim American Studies, American Studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and transnational studies interrogate structures, logics, and manifestations of US empire, militarization, and exceptionalism that determine the lives of racialized communities in the US and abroad. Her first book听Contemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging听(NYU Press, 2014) engages an array of Arab American literary and visual texts from the 1990s onwards that contest negative representations of Arabs and Muslims in the US. In it, Fadda emphasizes feminist, anti-assimilationist, and transnational modes of Arab American and Muslim American belonging that contest the conceived boundaries of the US nation-state and transform hegemonic forms of national membership and citizenship.
Her current book-length project,听Carceral States and Dissident听Citizenships: Narratives of Resistance听in听an听Age听of听鈥淭别谤谤辞谤鈥�听highlights US global carceral practices by focusing on Arab and Muslim narratives and testimonials of incarceration and confinement coming out of the 鈥淲ar on Terror.鈥� Her study extends to legal and historical documents, literary texts, visual documentation, and political discourse emerging from secret and extra-legal incarceration sites including the Guant谩namo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons.
She is the recipient of an NEH summer grant, a Future of Minority Studies Fellowship, and a 黑料不打烊 Humanities Center Fellowship. Her essays on gender, race, ethnicity, war trauma, cross-racial solidarities, and transnational belonging have appeared in a variety of journals and edited collections.
She serves as the editor of the听听at 黑料不打烊 Press.