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Abdali

Zainab Abdali

Graduate Student

Department of English and Creative Writing

CONTACT

za10@rice.edu

DISSERTATION

"Reading the War on Terror: Towards an Abolitionist Horizon" (tentative)

ADVISORS

Dr. Betty Joseph and Dr. Alden Sajor Marte-Wood

Zainab Abdali is a PhD candidate in English at Rice University. She researches contemporary South Asian and Arab Anglophone art and literature. Her dissertation project, titled "Reading the War on Terror: Towards an Abolitionist Horizon," examines art and literature emerging from the War on Terror, and considers the literary, visual, and material forms of anti-war resistance and solidarity being articulated through these works. She is a co-founder of the Rice Asian Diasporic and Asian American Research Collective (RADAAR), which serves as a hub for research, community-building, and advocacy work around Asian and Asian American Studies in Houston and in Texas. Before coming to Rice, Zainab served as a Fulbright scholar, teaching English in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Research Areas

Global Anglophone; feminist theory; postcolonial theory; Asian and Asian American Studies; Critical Muslim Studies; public humanities

Education

B.A., English & Mathematics, Syracuse University, 2018

Honors & Awards

Rice Humanities Research Center Public Humanities Graduate Associateship, 2025-2026

Rice Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Graduate Certificate Fellowship, 2025

Rice Chao Center for Asian Studies Graduate Ambassador, 2024-2025

2023 Graduate Research Award, awarded by the European Association for South Asian Studies; paper title: “The New Indian Woman and Her Others in Alankrita Shrivastava’s Films”

2022 Seth Balkishan das Singhal Essay Award, awarded by the Rice Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, paper title: “Self-Rooted Belonging and “Pleasing Dislocations:” Feminist Re-imaginings of Home in Shahzia Sikander’s Work

Rice English Department Clancy Taylor Summer Public Humanities Fellowship, Summer 2021 & Summer 2022

2021 Graduate Best Essay Prize awarded by the Rice Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, paper title: “Paternalism, Rationality, and the Chain of Being”

2019 Fulbright grant recipient, awarded by the United States Department of State for an English Teaching Assistantship in Nairobi, Kenya

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