Fawzia Afzal-Khan is Professor of English, University Distinguished Scholar, and former Director of Women and Gender Studies (now called Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies) at Montclair State University. Afzal-Khan received her BA from Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Pakistan, and her MA and PhD in English Literature from Tufts University, Ma.
She is a cultural materialist who works at the intersection of Feminist Theory, Cultural and Performance Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. She created and teaches the first course on writings by and about Muslim Women at MSU, as well as an Honors course in Muslim Pop Culture, and has published extensively on this topic. She is author of 6 books, her latest a monograph entitled Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through its Women Singers, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She is also author of a controversial memoir entitled Lahore With Love; Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani-Style (Syracuse University Press 2010; rep Insanity Ink 2010; can be ordered at Amazon). She is a frequent contributor to Counterpunch and Express Tribune, and a published poet and playwright.
She is a Contributing Editor to TDR (The Drama Review) and serves on the Advisory Board of SAR (the South Asian Review), and on the Editorial Board of Arab Stages.
She is also a trained vocalist in the North Indian Classical tradition. Her music videos exploring themes of gender, religion, class, set in Pakistan, can be viewed on youtube (FAK Lahore, FAK Payal, FAK Smokescreen, FAK Sacrifice)her latest a project called Faqeera to be released Jan 1, 2019.
She was a founding member of the experimental theatre collective Compagnie Faim de Siecle, with whom she toured and performed in Europe and N America for a decade from 1999-2005.
Her current research work is focused on Pakistani Popular Culture, with a focus on Pakistani Female Singers. She won a National Endowment of the Humanities grant in 2011 to make a trailer for a documentary on this subject, called “From the Melody Queen to the Muslim Madonna: Pakistani Female Singers 1947-Present” (now renamed: Siren Song: Women Singers of Pakistan).
She is winner of a Fulbright Specialist fellowship AY 2015-2020, lecturing at various universities in Pakistan. She has also served as Visiting Professor of the Arts at NYU in Abu Dhabi in spring 2016 and for the AY 2018-19.
