I was hired by the Politics department in 1991 and retired from it in 2020. For half this time, I worked as the (Founding) Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity and, in Spring 2008, also held the Spinoza Chair in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. However, my career path dates from 1976 when I joined Pakistan's Foreign Service (Diplomatic Corps), but from which I was dismissed six years later on the orders of General Zia ul Haq, for having criticized him. I then worked as the assistant editor ofThe Muslim, an opposition paper, until 1983 when I left for graduate school in the U.S., where I was later granted political asylum. My degrees include a Ph.D. (with distinction) in International Studies from the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS, now the Josef Korbel School), University of Denver, U.S., an M.A. (first position) in Journalism from the University of the Punjab, Pakistan, and a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy from Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan.
Status message
Asma Barlas
Work history & Academic degrees
Scholarly & Other writings
University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
Much of my scholarship is about configurations of colonial, sexual/ textual, representational and epistemic power. In my first book, I drew on Antonio Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and a passive revolution to explain the differing political trajectories of Pakistan and India after their independence from British colonial rule in 1947. In the next, I countered both traditional and secular/ feminist interpretations of the Qur'an as a patriarchal text by re-reading it in light of its descriptions of God, the absence of the concept of gender in it, and its teachings that women and men originate in a single self, are equally God's subjects, and each other's guardians. I've also made the case for an ungendered Islamic theology and Muslim women's right to equality from within a Qur'anic framework in several journal articles and book chapters. For some years after 9/11/01, I detailed the West's millennium-long history of Othering Islam, including, most notably, in a Spinoza Lecture and popular writings. The latter also include a weekly column for the Muslim , op-eds in The Daily Times, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, Open Democracy, and New Statesman, as well as poetry and short-stories.
Believing Women in Islam : Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002) has been translated into Bahasa Indonesian (2005), while derivative essays have appeared in Arabic, Bengali, Spanish, Dutch, German, French and Portuguese. A revised edition was published in 2019 (in the U.K. by Saqi) along with A Brief Introduction, co-authored with David R. Finn.
Awards, Honors, Fellowships
*Faculty Excellence Award (2019), Ithaca College.
*Summer Research Grants: 2018, 2005, 2003, 2001, 1997, 1995, 1993; Small Grants: 1995-2001; 1992-93, Ithaca College.
* Award to teach in the NYI-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia, from the State University of New York (SUNY), 2013.
* Spinoza Chair in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Spring, 2008.
* Fellowship, International Center for Islam and Pluralism, Jakarta, Indonesia, June 16-July 3, 2005.
* Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002; 2019) nominated for the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, 2019; 2009; 2005.
* New York State Woman of Distinction, District: John R. Kuhl, Jr., 2003.
* Post-doctoral Fellowship, American Institute of Pakistan Studies, 1998-99.
Thank you very much for this award; I’m relieved it isn’t the Hell Raiser’s Lifetime Achievement prize since that’s not how I’d like to be remembered. I’m very grateful for your recognition, especially since I work alongside many stellar teachers, scholars, and campus and community leaders who are deserving of it as well.
Teaching was my third career and I came to it rather late in life; in fact, I was 41 when I joined IC as an assistant professor. But I’ve appreciated it the most, even though the process of being in the academy was, at some level, self-destructive. I say this because I’ve been trying to excavate my own intellectual foundations ever since graduate school when I first began to recognize that I was a colonized subject whose first language, English, isn’t even her mother tongue. Being in the classroom allowed me to continue dismantling parts of myself, which is perhaps why I chose to teach what—and how—I did.
And that, of course, was self-indulgent since my own struggles and desires and anxieties shaped the texts I picked, with which generations of students then had to struggle as well. I also feel self-indulgent because I had the freedom to write about things that mattered most to me and to speak my mind (freely!) even when doing so was the wrongest thing to do. So, I am grateful to my students and faculty and staff colleagues for having given me the space to find myself more fully through my teaching and scholarship, and service; to then reward me for that journey is astonishing to me.
Pre-Ithaca College
Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Pakistan.
* Ph.D. Dissertation passed with distinction (GSIS, University of Denver); nominated for the Gabriel Almond Award in Comparative Politics, American Political Science Association, 1990. GPA: 4.0.
* International Fellowship for Ph.D., American Association of University Women, 1989.
* Teaching Grant, Ford Foundation, GSIS, University of Denver, 1988.
* Ben Cherrington Fellowship, GSIS, University of Denver, 1985-86.
* Robert Anderson Fellowship, GSIS, University of Denver, 1984.
* Reham al-Farra Journalists Fellowship, United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDP), New York, 1983.
* First Position, 7th Foreign Service Officers Course in International Relations & Diplomacy, Administrative Staff College, Pakistan, 1976.
* First Position (in all M.A. programs), University of the Punjab, Pakistan, 1971.
* Department of Journalism Fellowship, University of the Punjab, Pakistan, 1969-71.