Nihad M. Farooq
Associate Professor
- School of Literature, Media, and Communication
- ADVANCE IAC
Overview
Dr. Nihad M. Farooq is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke University, a Joint M.A. in English & American Literature and Women’s Studies from Brandeis University, and an A.B. in English from Dartmouth College. Farooq’s interdisciplinary research approach moves between literary studies, American and Atlantic Studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies of science and ethnography. Her first book, Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830-1940 (New York University Press, 2016), investigates the transformative power of encounter between and among scientists and indigenous and diasporic populations in the Americas in the long nineteenth century. A second book manuscript in progress, tentatively entitled Roots in the Air: Precarious Freedoms in the Networked Atlantic, explores the role of enslaved women engaged in networked acts of resistance in the Black Atlantic in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Ph.D., English, Duke University
- Joint M.A. English, WST
- A.B., English, Dartmouth College
Interests
- Literary and Cultural Studies
- Media Studies
- Science and Technology Studies
Courses
- ENGL-1102: English Composition II
- LCC-3112: Evolution&Industrial Age
- LCC-3116: Sci, Tech& Postmodernism
- LCC-3118: Sci, Tech&American Empire
- LCC-3208: African-Amer Lit/Cult
- LCC-3210: Ethnicity-Amer Culture
- LCC-3306: Science,Technology& Race
- LCC-3510: American Culture II
- LCC-4102: Senior Thesis
- LMC-2000: Intro-Lit, Media, & Comm
- LMC-2350: Intro to Social Justice
- LMC-3116: Sci Tech & Postmodernisms
- LMC-3118: Sci Tech&American Empire
- LMC-3202: Studies in Fiction
- LMC-3208: African-Amer Lit/Cult
- LMC-3209: Asian Amer Lit & Culture
- LMC-3210: Ethnicity American Cult
- LMC-3212: Women, Lit & Culture
- LMC-3316: Postcolonialism
- LMC-3511: American Lit & Culture
- LMC-3520: The Graphic Novel
- LMC-4000: Senior Seminar in LMC
- LMC-4000: Senior Seminar in LMC: Empire and the Atlantic World
- LMC-4102: Senior Thesis
- LMC-4200: Seminar Lit/Cult Theory: Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
- LMC-8803: Special Topics: Transnational Networks
- LMC-8910: Special Problems: Literary and Cultural Theory
Publications
Selected Publications
Books
- Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830- 1940
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series.
Date: 2016
In the 19th century, personhood was a term of regulation and discipline through which slaves, criminals, and others, could be “made and unmade,” as scholars like Colin Dayan and others have argued. Yet it was precisely the fraught, uncontainable nature of personhood that necessitated its constant legislation, wherein its meaning could be both contested and controlled.
Examining scientific and literary narratives, Farooq’s Undisciplined encourages an alternative consideration of personhood, one that emerges from evolutionary and ethnographic discourse. Moving chronologically from 1830 to 1940, Farooq explores the scientific and cultural entanglements of Atlantic travelers in and beyond the Darwin era, and invites us to attend more closely to the consequences of mobility and contact on disciplines and persons. Bringing together an innovative group of readings—from field journals, diaries, letters, and testimonies to novels, stage plays, and audio recordings—Farooq advocates for a reconsideration of science, personhood, and the priority of race for the field of American studies. Whether expressed as narratives of acculturation, or as acts of resistance against the camera, the pen, or the shackle, these stories of the studied subjects of the Atlantic world add a new chapter to debates about personhood and disciplinarity in this era that actively challenged legal, social, and scientific categorizations.
Book - Editors
- Handbook of Literature and Science Since 1900, co-edited with Members of the Triangle Collective
Date: November 2020
Journal Articles
- “A Useful Delusion: Valentine Farm and the Flight for Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad”
In: Utopian Studies
Date: 2019
- “Creolizing Cultures: Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ethnographic Personhood in the Twentieth Century,” Studies in the Humanities 41: 1, 2
In: Studies in the Humanities
Date: 2015
- “Of Science and Excess: Jacob Riis, Anzia Yezierska, and the Ethnographic Turn in Immigrant Fiction,” American Studies 53.4
In: American Studies
Date: 2014
- “National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti”
In: Journal of Transnational American Studies
Date: 2013
- “Narrating Sense, Ordering Nature: Darwin’s Anthropological Vision”
In: Concentric: Literary & Cultural Studies
Date: 2012
Chapters
- “Course Objectives: On Resisting Solutions to ‘The Race Problem’ in the Southern STEM Classroom"
In: Teaching American Studies: State of the Classroom as State of the Field. Eds. Elizabeth A. Duclos-Orsello, Joseph B. Entin, Rebecca Hill
Date: August 2021
- "The Communications Revolution and the Networked Path to Freedom”
In: African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, vol. 3, 1830-1850, Ed. Benjamin Fagan; Series Ed. Joycelyn Moody
Date: June 2021
- Lauren Coats and Nihad M. Farooq, "Regionalism in the Era of the New Deal"
In: Blackwell Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, Ed. Charles Crow
Date: May 2003
All Publications
Books
- Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830- 1940
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series.
Date: 2016
In the 19th century, personhood was a term of regulation and discipline through which slaves, criminals, and others, could be “made and unmade,” as scholars like Colin Dayan and others have argued. Yet it was precisely the fraught, uncontainable nature of personhood that necessitated its constant legislation, wherein its meaning could be both contested and controlled.
Examining scientific and literary narratives, Farooq’s Undisciplined encourages an alternative consideration of personhood, one that emerges from evolutionary and ethnographic discourse. Moving chronologically from 1830 to 1940, Farooq explores the scientific and cultural entanglements of Atlantic travelers in and beyond the Darwin era, and invites us to attend more closely to the consequences of mobility and contact on disciplines and persons. Bringing together an innovative group of readings—from field journals, diaries, letters, and testimonies to novels, stage plays, and audio recordings—Farooq advocates for a reconsideration of science, personhood, and the priority of race for the field of American studies. Whether expressed as narratives of acculturation, or as acts of resistance against the camera, the pen, or the shackle, these stories of the studied subjects of the Atlantic world add a new chapter to debates about personhood and disciplinarity in this era that actively challenged legal, social, and scientific categorizations.
Book - Editors
- Handbook of Literature and Science Since 1900, co-edited with Members of the Triangle Collective
Date: November 2020
Journal Articles
- “A Useful Delusion: Valentine Farm and the Flight for Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad”
In: Utopian Studies
Date: 2019
- “Creolizing Cultures: Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ethnographic Personhood in the Twentieth Century,” Studies in the Humanities 41: 1, 2
In: Studies in the Humanities
Date: 2015
- “Of Science and Excess: Jacob Riis, Anzia Yezierska, and the Ethnographic Turn in Immigrant Fiction,” American Studies 53.4
In: American Studies
Date: 2014
- “National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti”
In: Journal of Transnational American Studies
Date: 2013
- “Narrating Sense, Ordering Nature: Darwin’s Anthropological Vision”
In: Concentric: Literary & Cultural Studies
Date: 2012
Chapters
- “Course Objectives: On Resisting Solutions to ‘The Race Problem’ in the Southern STEM Classroom"
In: Teaching American Studies: State of the Classroom as State of the Field. Eds. Elizabeth A. Duclos-Orsello, Joseph B. Entin, Rebecca Hill
Date: August 2021
- "The Communications Revolution and the Networked Path to Freedom”
In: African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, vol. 3, 1830-1850, Ed. Benjamin Fagan; Series Ed. Joycelyn Moody
Date: June 2021
- Lauren Coats and Nihad M. Farooq, "Regionalism in the Era of the New Deal"
In: Blackwell Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, Ed. Charles Crow
Date: May 2003