Umme Al-wazedi

2025 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD RECIPIENT

PhD '08 English

Umme Al-wazedi is a professor of Postcolonial Literature in the Department of English and the Division Dean of Humanities at Augustana College. Her research and teaching examine the intersectionality of multiple social identities such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, ability, and sexuality, and present counternarratives of marginalized women, communities, and people seen within oppressive locations and structures such as colonialism, imperialism, neo- imperialism, and patriarchy. Her research and teaching interests encompass postcolonial literature, British literature, (Muslim) women writers of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, Muslim feminism, and postcolonial disability studies. She has published in South Asian Review, South Asian History and Culture, and Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She is also the author of several book chapters, including the groundbreaking chapter “Postcolonial Feminism” published in the Companion to Feminist Studies. Her co-edited books, Postcolonial Urban Outcasts: City Margins in South Asian Literature and Veil Obsessed: Representations in Literature, Art, and Media, were published in 2016 and 2024, respectively.