
Najwa Mayer
Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Loyola Marymount University Visiting Researcher, Boston University Society of Fellows (2024 – Current)
- Email najwamay@bu.edu
- Education Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University
M.A., American Studies, Yale University
M.Phil., American Studies, Yale University
B.A., Literature, University of California, San Diego
Najwa Mayer is a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher with the Society of Fellows at Boston University and was part of BU’s inaugural Society of Fellows postdoctoral cohort. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University. As an interdisciplinary scholar of global US cultural politics, her research and teaching fields intersect Asian American and ethnic studies, critical Muslim studies, gender and sexuality studies, as well as visual and literary cultures. Therein, her areas of specialization and writing include cultural production and social movements across Muslim and Asian diasporas; US empire and anti-imperial critique; race and racialization; Islam in the US; transnational feminisms; and critical refugee studies. She is working on two book projects: The first examines the invention and conventions of “Muslim American” popular cultures through interrelations between racial, sexual, and secular politics, genre forms, and transnational markets. The second traces the transcontinental and interregional supply chains of the long War on Terror through their afterlives in refugee literature, visual art, and Islamic-informed critiques of capitalist militarism across Muslim Asian and African diasporas. Her research has received support from the Social Science Research Council, Andrew Mellon Foundation, and Henry Luce Foundation, among others. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University.
Najwa was formerly a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and in the Leslie Center for Humanities at Dartmouth College. Her other professional histories include curatorial and teaching work in art museums as well as programming and education in nonprofit organizations focused on expanding university access to the communities she comes from: refugee, immigrant, and working-class communities of color.
Najwa is currently co-chair of the SWANA Diaspora Studies Section of the Association for Asian American Studies and a host for the New Books Network podcast.