Tazeen M. Ali
Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics
I am a scholar of Islam and gender in the contemporary period. My current project explores narratives of masculinity, sexuality, and national belonging in American and British Muslim entertainment media.
Tazeen M. Ali joined the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics as Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics on July 1, 2019.
Ali’s research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, race and religion in the US, and Muslims in popular culture. Her first book The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press: November 2022) is the first full-length scholarly account of the phenomenon of woman-led mosques that have been emerging across North America and Europe since 2015, and it analyzes how American Muslim women negotiate the Islamic tradition to cultivate religious authority and build gender-equitable worship communities.
She is currently writing a book on narratives of masculinity, racism, and sexuality in entertainment media produced by American and British Muslims, tentatively titled Muslims on Screen: Racism and Sexuality in Anglo-American Islam (under contract with NYU Press). Ali frequently writes for public audiences with her work appearing in Public Books, ARC Mag (formerly Religion & Politics), The Conversation, Middle East Eye, and The Maydan. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Museum of American Religion.
Ali earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies with a graduate certificate in Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Boston University in 2019. She was a visiting postgraduate student in Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh from 2017 to 2018. Prior to that she obtained a master’s degree in Islamic Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, and her bachelor’s degree with honors in both religion and biology from Lehigh University. Competitive fellowships and grants from The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Boston University Center for the Humanities, and Center for Islam in the Contemporary World have supported her writing and research.
Books
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The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam
(New York: NYU Press, November 1, 2022)
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