Biography
Junaid Rana is an anthropologist who writes about global capitalism, diaspora, racism, and social protest movements. He is an associate professor of Asian American Studies with appointments in the Department of Anthropology, the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He is the author of Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora (Duke, 2011), winner of the 2013 Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in the Social Sciences.
Research Interests
Sociocultural anthropology, critical race studies, transnational cultural studies, diaspora studies; cities and urbanization, social movements, social justice activism and organizing; aesthetics, cultural production, political economy; critical Muslim studies, South Asia/Pakistan/America.
Education
PhD., Social Anthropology, University of Texas.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Head, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Associate Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Honors & Awards
- Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar Award, 2012-2017
- Illinois Program for Research in Humanities Faculty Fellowship on Theme of Belief. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005-2006.
- New Horizons Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, Illinois Program for the Research in the Humanities. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017
- Senior Research Fellowship, American Institute of Pakistan Studies. 2018.
- Winner of the 2013 Book Award in Social Sciences from the Association for Asian American Studies
- Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award. UIUC Asian American Cultural Center, 2009.
- Arnold O. Beckman Research Award. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011.
- Fulbright IIE Fellowship for study in Pakistan, 2000-2001.
- Humanities Release Time Award and Research Board Award, 2009.
- Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society Faculty Fellowship. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007-2008.
- Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Asian American Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003-2004.
Intellectual Property
Books
- Rana, Junaid. 2011. Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Rana, Junaid, and Sohail Daulatzai. eds. 2018. With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Racism, Muslims, and Empire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Book Contributions
- Rana, Junaid. "Policing Kashmiri Brooklyn." The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security before and after 9/11. . Ed. Sylvester Johnson and Steve Weitzman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017.
- Rana, Junaid. "The Globality of Af-Pak: U.S. Empire and the Muslim Problem." The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies. . New York: Routledge, 2017.
- Rana, Junaid. "No Muslims Involved: Letter to Ethnic Studies Comrades." Flashpoints in Asian American Studies. . Ed. Cathy Schlund-Vials. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.
- Rana, Junaid. "The 9/11 of Our Imaginations: Islam, the Figure of the Muslim, and the Failed Liberalism of the Racial Present." Cambridge History of Asian American Literature.. . Ed. Rajini Srikanth and Min Song. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Rana, Junaid. "Race." Keywords for Asian American Cultural Studies. . Ed. Cathy Schlund-Vials, Linda Vo, and K.Scott Wong. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
- Rana, Junaid. "Terror." Keywords for American Cultural Studies. . Ed. Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. New York: New York University Press, 2014.
- Rana, Junaid. "When Pakistanis Became Middle Eastern: Visualizing Racial Targets in the Global War on Terror." Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora. . Ed. Evelyn Alsultany and Ella Shohat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
- Rana, Junaid. "Tracing the Muslim Body: Race, U.S. Deportation, and Pakistani Return Migration." The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in the Age of U.S. Power. . Ed. Vivek Bald, Miabi Chatterji, Sujani Reddy, and Manu Vimalassary. New York: New York University Press, 2013.
- Rana, Junaid. "The Desperate U.S.-Pakistan Alliance." Dispatches from Pakistan. . Ed. Qalandar Memon, Vijay Prashad, and Madiha Tahir. New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2012.
- Rana, Junaid. "Muslims in the Global City: Racism, Islamophobia, and Multiracial Organizing in Chicago." Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism. . Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2012.
- Rana, Junaid. "The Language of Terror: Panic, Peril, Racism ." State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States. . Ed. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Moon-Kie Jung, and Joao Vargas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
- Rana, Junaid. "Controlling Diaspora: Illegality, 9/11, and Pakistani Labor Migration." Pakistani Diasporas: Culture, Conflict, and Change. . Ed. Virinder Kalra. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Journal Articles
- Rana, Junaid. “Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy.” American Anthropologist. 122.1(2020): 99-111.
- Rana, Junaid, and John Marquez. "Black Radical Possibility and the Decolonial International." South Atlantic Quarterly 116.3 (2017): 505-528.
- Rana, Junaid. "The Academic Freedom of Social Movement." Journal of Asian American Studies 19.1 (2016): 113-118.
- Rana, Junaid, and John Marquez. "The Educational Thing: Intellectual Labor and the Stakes of Struggle." Critical Ethnic Studies 2.1 (2016): 1-13.
- Rana, Junaid. "The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex." Social Text 34.4 (2016): 111-138.
- Rana, Junaid, and John Marquez. "Introduction: On Our Genesis and Future." Critical Ethnic Studies 1.1 (2015): 1-8.
- Rana, Junaid, and Sohail Daulatzai. "Left." Critical Ethnic Studies 1.1 (2015): 39-42.
- Rana, Junaid, and Diane Fujino. "Taking Risks, or the Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies." American Quarterly 67.4 (2015): 1027-1038.
- "Anti-Racist Teaching, Student Ethnography, and the Multiracial Model of Islam." Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences (LATISS) 6.3 (2014): 51-63.
- "The Story of Islamophobia." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 9.2 (2007): 148-161.
- Rana, Junaid, and Gilberto Rosas. "Managing Crisis: Post-9/11 Policing and Empire." Cultural Dynamics 18.3 (2006): 219-234.
Recent Publications
Beliso-De Jesús, A. M., Pierre, J., & Rana, J. (2023). White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 52, 417-435. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-052721-040400
Rana, J. (2022). Forever End Times: GWOT in Three Parts. American Quarterly, 74(3), 563-566. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2022.0037
Rana, J. (2020). Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy. American Anthropologist, 122(1), 99-111. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13355
Rana, J., Alsultany, E., Deeb, L., Fadda, C., Khabeer, S. A., Ali, A., Daulatzai, S., Grewal, Z., Hammer, J., & Naber, N. (2020). Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters. Amerasia Journal, 46(1), 57-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00447471.2020.1761278
Daulatzai, S., & Rana, J. (Eds.) (2018). With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire. (Muslim International; Vol. 2). University of Minnesota Press.