Amir Aziz (they | them) 2023-24 Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Amir Aziz is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies working with Professor Minoo Moallem. Dr. Aziz holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University - New Brunswick.
Fluent in five languages, including Arabic, French, and Malay, Dr. Aziz is an educator, filmmaker, and scholar of Ethnic and Gender studies; Arab and Asian American histories and diasporas; Decolonial feminisms; Secularism and Islam; Carceral studies; Migration studies; Disability studies; and Comparative settler colonialisms, with focus on the United States, South-West Asia & North Africa (SWANA), Maritime/Pacific South-East Asia, and the settler-colonial contexts of Algeria, Palestine, and Kanaky/New Caledonia.
Dr. Aziz's research focuses on how ‘War on Terror’ practices of surveillance and confinement have impacted Muslim migrant women and gender non-normative individuals, particularly those of Arab, South Asian, South-East Asian, and South-West Asian background. Dr. Aziz’s current book project examines how 'counter-terrorism’ policies of detention, surveillance, and informancy by ICE and U.S. security agencies have enacted gendered/racialized forms of disablement and deprivation, emerging via a global carceral nexus of anti-Arab, anti-Asian, and anti-Muslim racisms.
Dr. Aziz is especially interested in the intersecting pedagogies and methodologies of possibility between SWANA Studies, Arab American Studies, and Asian American Studies, particularly on the longstanding anti-imperial feminist solidarities and decolonial imaginaries between South-West Asian, South-East Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander American communities.
Dr. Aziz has over a decade of experience teaching college courses. In 2023, Dr. Aziz was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education by Rutgers University, in recognition of teaching excellence in courses such as “Prison Abolition: Anti-Racist & Feminist Perspectives” and “Gender, Ethnicity, Representation” across six years.
Dr. Aziz is also a filmmaker with over a decade of experience producing media projects on the costs of the ‘War on Terror’ on Arab, SWANA, and Muslim communities. Dr. Aziz is presently working on a feature-length documentary film on Guantánamo Bay and U.S. empire’s neocolonial and ableist violences against Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, and other BIPOC communities.
Find out more about Dr. Aziz’s work at amirazizphd.com as well as on Academia.edu for Dr. Aziz's C.V. at https://berkeley.academia.edu/AmirAziz. Dr. Aziz can be contacted at amir.aziz@berkeley.edu.