Junaid Rana
Biographic Data
| ID | 115498 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Junaid Rana |
| GIVEN NAMES | Junaid |
| FAMILY NAME | Rana |
| SIGNATURE | RANA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5074-126X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 194 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Aftasten/Tantear: A sensorial, coalitional wayfinding among Muslim runners
Muslim recreational runners in Muslim‐minority settings that take up running as their preferred form of leisure indicate that they feel they have to navigate a sense of exclusion when running outdoors. This article explores the process of exploration and sensing in public, represented by the Dutch verb aftasten , to investigate the way Muslim women and men feel their way throughout the world: to grasp it, understand it and make it one's own. It b…
Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy, Making It Plain
Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy, Making It Plain
The Anthropology of White Supremacy: A Reader
An anthology of original essays that examine white supremacy around the globe through the lens of anthropology White supremacy, an entrenched global system that emerged alongside European colonialism, is based on presumed biological and cultural differences, racist practices, the hypervaluation of whiteness, and the devaluation of nonwhites. Anthropology has been shaped by—and has helped to shape—white supremacy, yet the discipline also offers po…
Sensing inclusion among visually impaired and guide runners
People with visual impairments partake in recreational running with sighted guide runners. In the Netherlands, the Running Blind foundation enables blind and visually impaired runners and their guides to experience the social and physical benefits of outdoor recreation together. While sport policies and programs in the Netherlands call for more inclusive sport practices, it is often unclear what 'inclusion' means for the people involved. This art…
White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology
This review presents a historical and contemporary view of white supremacy as an entrenched global system based on presumed biological and cultural difference, related practices of racism, the valorization of whiteness, and the denigration of nonwhiteness. We center the role of the discipline of anthropology, and contend that the discipline is shaped by, and shapes, structures of white supremacy. In this article, we detail anthropology's role in …
Sensory ecologies: The Refinement of Movement and the Senses in Sport
Sport is centrally concerned with the human body. Those concerns focus on how bodies move materially in space and in time. In this article, we develop our concept of “Sensory Ecology” to elucidate how one might come to develop and understand the creation of specialist bodily knowledge found in sport. Sensory ecologies are produced through the refinement of enskilled movement of bodily materials in specific spatial and temporal confines. To unders…
Gendered enskilment: Becoming Women Through Recreational Running
In this article, I discuss how women learn to use their bodies, move, and become a different kind of being than men. I focus on the embodiment of gender in recreational running enskilment. The materiality of our bodies and the social expectations of girls and women affect their running enskilment. The environment of gendered, racialized, and otherwise minoritized people differ from that of white, cis-gendered men, who often form the base construc…
Forever End Times: GWOT in Three Parts
Forever End Times:GWOT in Three Parts Junaid Rana (bio) Part 1: The Number There is a number that does not make sense to me. As of August 2021, the number of dead from post-9/11 wars stands at 929,000, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.1 It is a conservative number that does not account for the enormity of the violence. When I first looked at this number after a November 2019 report, the number was 801,000. I have been cal…
Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women's kickboxing in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands young Muslim women have increasingly begun to join women-only kickboxing gyms. Dutch public discourse has taken notice, treating this phenomenon as a surprising development. The general assumption, in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly, is that women's sport is a form of secular, feminist empowerment; Muslim women's participation thus exemplifies the incongruence of Islam with the modern, secular nation-state. C…
Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters
The following interview with a collective of scholars describes the organization, conceptualization, and thematic framework of the online syllabus #IslamophobiaisRacism. The goals of the syllabus include theorizing anti-Muslim racism and developing strategies to combat white supremacy
Honoring Our Elders
Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy
This article considers how anthropology can grapple with white supremacy by conceptualizing it as global and in relation to religion. Drawing on the exchange published as A Rap on Race between anthropologist Margaret Mead and the writer James Baldwin, I address the connection of religion and moral belief to racism, white supremacy, and the critique of racial liberalism. In their conversation, Mead and Baldwin discuss Christianity and white suprem…
The Feeling of Being Watched . Assia Boundaoui, dir. Impact Partners, Multitude Films, Naked Edge Films. 2018. 86 mins. DCP
Writing the Muslim Left: An Introduction to Throwing Stones
With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire
No Muslims Involved: Letter to Ethnic Studies Comrades
Moved by the tears of others: Emotion Networking in the Heritage Sphere
There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands. We introduce ‘emotion networking’ as a methodology to approach present-day heritage production, aiming for a novel approach to engage with ‘the…
Black Radical Possibility and the Decolonial International
Recent mobilizations against police terror in cities across the United States can be described as expected and unexpected. They are expected by those conscious of the genealogy of racial/colonial violence. In this sense, radical resistance is always already logical. Those same movements can be perceived as rather unexpected considering recent pessimistic assessments of black politics within the current neoliberal (or postcolonial) conjuncture. Sc…
The Academic Freedom of Social Movement
The Academic Freedom of Social Movement Junaid Rana (bio) Hallowed terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” “values,” and “dialogue” or “free exchange,” even “morality,” are employed in unexpected ways and used to mask sheer irrationality. The righteous haze that surrounds such figurative potential blinds us to the literal violence before our eyes. When public discourse threatens to become illegal, what responsibilities do teachers have to speak about …
Undoing Border Imperialism
The Educational Thing: Intellectual Labor and the Stakes of Struggle
The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex
This essay draws on ethnographic research in a Pakistani neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to illuminate how the concepts of becoming and infrastructure reveal insights into racialization and the workings of the counterterror state. I discuss the concepts of racial becoming and racial infrastructure in the context of the terror-industrial complex, which implements technologies of policing as part of the state and toward a range of community-bas…
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies Junaid Rana (bio) and Diane C. Fujino (bio) In April 2013 the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) became the first academic organization in the United States to pass a resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.1 As an important act of solidarity, it is worth briefly elaborating the history that led to this momentous decision. The…
On Our Genesis and Future
The Story of Islamophobia
This article examines the historical construction of the figure of the Muslim through the concept of race and Islamophobia. As a threat to white Christian supremacy, and in relation to anti-Jewish racism, the Muslim is constructed through a racial logic that crosses the cultural categories of nation, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality. The placement of the Muslim in the U.S. racial formation encompasses a broad race concept that connects a histor…
The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex
This essay draws on ethnographic research in a Pakistani neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to illuminate how the concepts of becoming and infrastructure reveal insights into racialization and the workings of the counterterror state. I discuss the concepts of racial becoming and racial infrastructure in the context of the terror-industrial complex, which implements technologies of policing as part of the state and toward a range of community-bas…
Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy
This article considers how anthropology can grapple with white supremacy by conceptualizing it as global and in relation to religion. Drawing on the exchange published as A Rap on Race between anthropologist Margaret Mead and the writer James Baldwin, I address the connection of religion and moral belief to racism, white supremacy, and the critique of racial liberalism. In their conversation, Mead and Baldwin discuss Christianity and white suprem…
Gendered enskilment: Becoming Women Through Recreational Running
In this article, I discuss how women learn to use their bodies, move, and become a different kind of being than men. I focus on the embodiment of gender in recreational running enskilment. The materiality of our bodies and the social expectations of girls and women affect their running enskilment. The environment of gendered, racialized, and otherwise minoritized people differ from that of white, cis-gendered men, who often form the base construc…
Managing Crisis: Post-9/11 Policing and Empire
Sensory ecologies: The Refinement of Movement and the Senses in Sport
Sport is centrally concerned with the human body. Those concerns focus on how bodies move materially in space and in time. In this article, we develop our concept of “Sensory Ecology” to elucidate how one might come to develop and understand the creation of specialist bodily knowledge found in sport. Sensory ecologies are produced through the refinement of enskilled movement of bodily materials in specific spatial and temporal confines. To unders…
Moved by the tears of others: Emotion Networking in the Heritage Sphere
There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands. We introduce ‘emotion networking’ as a methodology to approach present-day heritage production, aiming for a novel approach to engage with ‘the…
Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women's kickboxing in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands young Muslim women have increasingly begun to join women-only kickboxing gyms. Dutch public discourse has taken notice, treating this phenomenon as a surprising development. The general assumption, in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly, is that women's sport is a form of secular, feminist empowerment; Muslim women's participation thus exemplifies the incongruence of Islam with the modern, secular nation-state. C…
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies Junaid Rana (bio) and Diane C. Fujino (bio) In April 2013 the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) became the first academic organization in the United States to pass a resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.1 As an important act of solidarity, it is worth briefly elaborating the history that led to this momentous decision. The…
Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters
The following interview with a collective of scholars describes the organization, conceptualization, and thematic framework of the online syllabus #IslamophobiaisRacism. The goals of the syllabus include theorizing anti-Muslim racism and developing strategies to combat white supremacy
Forever End Times: GWOT in Three Parts
Forever End Times:GWOT in Three Parts Junaid Rana (bio) Part 1: The Number There is a number that does not make sense to me. As of August 2021, the number of dead from post-9/11 wars stands at 929,000, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.1 It is a conservative number that does not account for the enormity of the violence. When I first looked at this number after a November 2019 report, the number was 801,000. I have been cal…
Honoring Our Elders
Black Radical Possibility and the Decolonial International
Recent mobilizations against police terror in cities across the United States can be described as expected and unexpected. They are expected by those conscious of the genealogy of racial/colonial violence. In this sense, radical resistance is always already logical. Those same movements can be perceived as rather unexpected considering recent pessimistic assessments of black politics within the current neoliberal (or postcolonial) conjuncture. Sc…
Left
Managing Crisis: Post-9/11 Policing and Empire
The Story of Islamophobia
This article examines the historical construction of the figure of the Muslim through the concept of race and Islamophobia. As a threat to white Christian supremacy, and in relation to anti-Jewish racism, the Muslim is constructed through a racial logic that crosses the cultural categories of nation, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality. The placement of the Muslim in the U.S. racial formation encompasses a broad race concept that connects a histor…
Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora
Terrifying Muslims highlights how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced, constructed, and represented in the context of American empire and the recent global War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research that compares Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States before and after 9/11, Junaid Rana combines cultural and material analyses to chronicle the worldviews of Pakistani labor migrants as they become part of a larger…
Anti-racist teaching, student ethnography and the multiracial model of Islam
My Ethnography of the University (EUI) course 'Muslims in America' introduces undergraduate students to the racialisation of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. at large, and in the University in particular. In this article, I describe how an anti-racist pedagogy coupled with student ethnographic research can yield a rich learning process. Beginning with one of the key debates in the scholarship on Muslims in the United States, I introduce students to …
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies
Taking Risks, or The Question of Palestine Solidarity and Asian American Studies Junaid Rana (bio) and Diane C. Fujino (bio) In April 2013 the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) became the first academic organization in the United States to pass a resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.1 As an important act of solidarity, it is worth briefly elaborating the history that led to this momentous decision. The…
On Our Genesis and Future
Left
The Academic Freedom of Social Movement
The Academic Freedom of Social Movement Junaid Rana (bio) Hallowed terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” “values,” and “dialogue” or “free exchange,” even “morality,” are employed in unexpected ways and used to mask sheer irrationality. The righteous haze that surrounds such figurative potential blinds us to the literal violence before our eyes. When public discourse threatens to become illegal, what responsibilities do teachers have to speak about …
Undoing Border Imperialism
The Educational Thing: Intellectual Labor and the Stakes of Struggle
The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex
This essay draws on ethnographic research in a Pakistani neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to illuminate how the concepts of becoming and infrastructure reveal insights into racialization and the workings of the counterterror state. I discuss the concepts of racial becoming and racial infrastructure in the context of the terror-industrial complex, which implements technologies of policing as part of the state and toward a range of community-bas…
No Muslims Involved: Letter to Ethnic Studies Comrades
Moved by the tears of others: Emotion Networking in the Heritage Sphere
There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands. We introduce ‘emotion networking’ as a methodology to approach present-day heritage production, aiming for a novel approach to engage with ‘the…
Black Radical Possibility and the Decolonial International
Recent mobilizations against police terror in cities across the United States can be described as expected and unexpected. They are expected by those conscious of the genealogy of racial/colonial violence. In this sense, radical resistance is always already logical. Those same movements can be perceived as rather unexpected considering recent pessimistic assessments of black politics within the current neoliberal (or postcolonial) conjuncture. Sc…
Writing the Muslim Left: An Introduction to Throwing Stones
With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire
The Feeling of Being Watched . Assia Boundaoui, dir. Impact Partners, Multitude Films, Naked Edge Films. 2018. 86 mins. DCP
Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters
The following interview with a collective of scholars describes the organization, conceptualization, and thematic framework of the online syllabus #IslamophobiaisRacism. The goals of the syllabus include theorizing anti-Muslim racism and developing strategies to combat white supremacy
Honoring Our Elders
Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy
This article considers how anthropology can grapple with white supremacy by conceptualizing it as global and in relation to religion. Drawing on the exchange published as A Rap on Race between anthropologist Margaret Mead and the writer James Baldwin, I address the connection of religion and moral belief to racism, white supremacy, and the critique of racial liberalism. In their conversation, Mead and Baldwin discuss Christianity and white suprem…
Sensory ecologies: The Refinement of Movement and the Senses in Sport
Sport is centrally concerned with the human body. Those concerns focus on how bodies move materially in space and in time. In this article, we develop our concept of “Sensory Ecology” to elucidate how one might come to develop and understand the creation of specialist bodily knowledge found in sport. Sensory ecologies are produced through the refinement of enskilled movement of bodily materials in specific spatial and temporal confines. To unders…
Gendered enskilment: Becoming Women Through Recreational Running
In this article, I discuss how women learn to use their bodies, move, and become a different kind of being than men. I focus on the embodiment of gender in recreational running enskilment. The materiality of our bodies and the social expectations of girls and women affect their running enskilment. The environment of gendered, racialized, and otherwise minoritized people differ from that of white, cis-gendered men, who often form the base construc…
Forever End Times: GWOT in Three Parts
Forever End Times:GWOT in Three Parts Junaid Rana (bio) Part 1: The Number There is a number that does not make sense to me. As of August 2021, the number of dead from post-9/11 wars stands at 929,000, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.1 It is a conservative number that does not account for the enormity of the violence. When I first looked at this number after a November 2019 report, the number was 801,000. I have been cal…
Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women's kickboxing in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands young Muslim women have increasingly begun to join women-only kickboxing gyms. Dutch public discourse has taken notice, treating this phenomenon as a surprising development. The general assumption, in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly, is that women's sport is a form of secular, feminist empowerment; Muslim women's participation thus exemplifies the incongruence of Islam with the modern, secular nation-state. C…
White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology
This review presents a historical and contemporary view of white supremacy as an entrenched global system based on presumed biological and cultural difference, related practices of racism, the valorization of whiteness, and the denigration of nonwhiteness. We center the role of the discipline of anthropology, and contend that the discipline is shaped by, and shapes, structures of white supremacy. In this article, we detail anthropology's role in …
Sociology (24 works) · Political science (18 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · History (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Racism (8 works) · White supremacy (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)