About

Sohail Daulatzai is a professor at UC Irvine with research interests that include decolonization, Black Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, imperial culture, race, aesthetics, and politics. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Department of Critical Studies, and has served as a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA in the Department of Comparative Literature from 2003 to 2005. Daulatzai has authored several books, including 'With Stones In Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism and Empire' (2018), 'Fifty Years of The Battle of Algiers: Past as Prologue' (2016), 'Return of the Mecca: The Art of Islam and Hip-Hop' (2014), and 'Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom Beyond America' (2012). His writings encompass articles, essays, and critical analyses on topics such as the impact of cinema, political movements, and cultural expressions related to race, Islam, and resistance. In addition to his scholarly work, Daulatzai has directed films and music videos, curated exhibitions, and engaged in installation art, contributing to the fields of media, visual studies, and cultural activism.

Research topics

• Social Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Pedagogy
• Linguistics
• History
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters

  UNC Libraries · 2025-06-27

  articleOpen access

  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.

  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2023

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science

  In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.Poet and Zaytuna College gradu ate Rasheeda Plenty writes in her poem "Book" about the seeds of knowledge that are planted and cultivated within us, how we become "bewildered when a soft rain begins to fall inside of us . . .we stand gazing at our chests to see what will come from our bodies/this strange planting, here."As I write these acknowl edgments in the midst of a decades-long inquiry into questions of knowledge, I

  DOI

• Revolution and Rehearsal in the Global South

  Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East · 2022 · 2 citations

  • History

  Abstract This dialogue, recorded in late 2020, brings together a group of remarkable critics and creators working between Asia, Africa, and the West, each of whom address the relationship between revolutions and archives in their own practice. What does it mean, in practice, to unlearn the archive? What does it mean to do so from the global periphery, the still present specter of a third world?

  PublisherDOI

• Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters

  Amerasia Journal · 2020 · 19 citations

  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies

  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.

  PublisherDOI

• “From Here to Our Homelands”:

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2018-05-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire

  2018-05-01 · 2 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Writing the Muslim Left: An Introduction to Throwing Stones Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana I. Imperial Racism 1. Palestinian Exception to the First Amendment? The Pain and Pleasure of Palestine in the Public Sphere Steven Salaita 2. The Perils of American Muslim Politics Abdullah Al-Arian and Hafsa Kanjwal 3. Duplicity and Fear: Toward a Race and Class Critique of Islamophobia Stephen Sheehi 4. Palestinian Resistance and the Indivisibility of Justice Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi 5. From Here to Our Homelands: An Interview with Lara Kiswani on Radical Organizing and Internationalism in the Post-9/11 Era Sohail Daulatzai II. Decolonizing Geographies 6. Oppressed Majority: Violence and Muslim Communities in Multicultural Europe Fatima El-Tayeb 7. Atlanta, Civil Rights, and Blackamerican Islam Abbas Barzegar 8. Like 1979 All Over Again: Resisting Left Liberalism among Iranian Emigres Arash Davari 9. The Only Good Muslim Is a Loyal, Exotic, or Dead Muslim, or All of the Above Vivek Bald 10. Charlie, National Unity, and Colonial-Subjects Selim Nadi 11. Nuts and Bolts Organizing, They Work Everywhere: An Interview with Fahd Ahmed on Mass-Based Organizing and the National Security State Junaid Rana III. Technologies of Surveillance and Control 12. A Catastrophically Damaged Gene Pool: Law, White Supremacy, and the Muslim Psyche Sherene H. Razack 13. Death by Double-Tap: (Undoing) Racial Logics in the Age of Drone Warfare Ronak Kapadia 14. The Cry for Human Rights: Violence, Transition, and the Egyptian Revolution Nadine Naber and Atef Said 15. Learning in the Shadow of the War on Terror: Toward a Pedagogy of Muslim Indignation Arshad Imtiaz Ali 16. How Stereotypes Persist Despite Innovations in Media Representations Evelyn Alsultany 17. Grounded on the Battlefront: An Interview with Hamid Khan on the Police State in the War on Terror Sohail Daulatzai IV. Possible Futures: Dissent and the Protest Tradition 18. To Be a (Young) Black Muslim Woman Intellectual Su'ad Abdul Khabeer 19. Letter from a West Bank Refugee Camp Robin D.G. Kelley 20. Sami Al-Arian and Silencing Palestine Hatem Bazian 21. Raising Muslim Girls: Women-of-Color Legacies in U.S. American Islam Sylvia Chan-Malik 22. The Audience Is Still Present: Invocations of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz by Muslims in the United States Maryam Kashani 23. Make a Way out of No Way: An Interview with Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans on the Islamic Tradition and Social Justice Activism Junaid Rana Acknowledgments Contributors Index

  Publisher

• “Grounded on the Battlefront”:

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2018-05-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Writing the Muslim Left:

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2018-05-15 · 19 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Fifty Years of

  2016-09-01 · 8 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Left

  Critical Ethnic Studies · 2015-01-01 · 21 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Junaid Rana

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  4 shared

• Juliane Hammer

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2 shared

• Moustafa Bayoumi

  2 shared

• Lisa Lowe

  Duke University

  2 shared

• Arshad Imtiaz Ali

  George Washington University

  2 shared

• Kamran Asdar Ali

  1 shared

• Abdullah Bin

  1 shared

• A Chan-Malik

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., School of Cinematic Arts, Department of Critical Studies

  University of Southern California

Awards & honors

• UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA Department of Compa…
• UCHRI Multi-Campus Research Graduate Working Group, for “Glo…
• Doris Duke Foundation for the "Los Angeles Islamic Arts Init…
• Doris Duke Foundation for the Los Angeles Islamic Arts Initi…
• UC President’s Public Partnership in the Humanities, for “Re…