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ARPC faculty research awards foster groundbreaking and impactful scholarship in the areas of racial justice and/or decolonial practice and support faculty who show the capacity for great distinction in these research areas.Ìę

ARPC is currently accepting applications for 2023-2024:

2023-2024 Recipient

Dr. Mariam Durrani (SIS) is 2023-2024 Fellow for Transformative Scholarship. Dr. Durrani’s project explores the impact of the War on Terror policies in both US and Pakistani higher education. During her fellowship, she will be developing a book manuscript that, based on mult-sited ethnography, examines how racial regimes in both countries shape access and mobility in higher education:

During the fellowship year, I hope to complete my book manuscript The Imperial Optic: At the Intersection of Migration, Racialization, and Higher Education in the US and Pakistan, on the impact of War on Terror (WoT) policies in US and Pakistani higher education. Based on fieldwork in Lahore, New York City, and online between 2013 and 2019 with two groups—(1) Pakistani Diaspora Muslim students at a US public college and (2) Pashtun ethnic minority Muslim scholarship students at a private Pakistani university—my book examines how complementary racial regimes of the US and Pakistan shape access and mobility in higher education based on modern-colonial logics of US empire and its policies.Ìę
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Although college campuses are not typical “theaters of war,” my work demonstrates how performances and policies related to the “good Muslim”/“good Pashtun” student-subject functioned as everyday forms of educational imperialism for Pakistani-origin Muslim and Pashtun college students respectively, including NYPD surveillance on NYC campuses in NYC and educational opportunities made possible by GWOT policies of Pakistan. The book tracks these co-constitutive processes of imperial racialization across two contexts as parallel and related sets of youth-empire encounters based on multisided ethnography of global higher education and decolonial feminist analysis of youth-related policies in national security agreements in the US and in Pakistan.

2022-2023 Recipients

Sybil Williams is a playwright and dramaturge who currently teaches in both the Theatre/Musical Theatre Program and the Critical Race and Gender Studies Collaborative where she serves as program director for African American and African Diaspora Studies. Her areas of research include African and Caribbean indigenous performance and women’s performance as well as theatre for social change.

During the fellowship period she wrote Ethiopia: A Play. This innovative and timely adaption of Arthur Arent’s 1936 ‘living newspaper’ introduces new generations to a production that was barred from public performance by the US government due to its political content. Based on archival research and oral histories, the powerful work weaves together three interconnected stories: of Ethiopian resistance to colonial invasion by Italy’s fascist regime, of Pan-Africanist organizer and Black opera singer Mayme Richardson’s performance for Emperor Haile Selassie and support for the Ethiopian anticolonial struggle, and of the Rastafari sistren of SHASHAMENE who continue Richardson’s legacy. They play will be produced by DC theater and opera company IN Series as part of their 2024-25 season.Ìę

Dr. Kimberly Luchtenberg is an Assistant Professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business. Her current research focuses on the intersection of race and outcomes in finance and housing. Her research has been published in the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, the Journal of Real Estate Fiance and Economics, and the Journal of Real Estate Research, among others.
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