Nihad M. Farooq
Associate Professor
- School of Literature, Media, and Communication
- ADVANCE IAC
Overview
Dr. Nihad M. Farooq is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke University, a Joint M.A. in English & American Literature and Women’s Studies from Brandeis University, and an A.B. in English from Dartmouth College. Farooq’s interdisciplinary research approach moves between literary studies, American and Atlantic Studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies of science and ethnography. Her first book, Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830-1940 (New York University Press, 2016), investigates the transformative power of encounter between and among scientists and indigenous and diasporic populations in the Americas in the long nineteenth century. Her second book, Roots in the Air: How Black Women Unsettled Archives of Atlantic Slavery (New York University Press, 2027), examines how enslaved Black women disrupted archival records through their movement across Atlantic spaces. Her writing has appeared in American Studies, Utopian Studies, and American Literary History. She has received research support through the William S. Vaughn Fellowship at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, has served on the Editorial Board of American Literature, and was the 2025 winner of Georgia Tech's W.H. Ector Outstanding Teacher Award.
- Ph.D., English, Duke University
- Joint M.A. English, WST
- A.B., English, Dartmouth College
Distinctions:
- Georgia Tech Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award for Senior Faculty, April 2025
- Vanderbilt University, Warren Center for the Humanities, Andrew W. Mellon/William S. Vaughn Visiting Faculty Research Fellowship, 2012-13.
- Duke University Bass Dissertation Fellowship, 2005-6.
Interests
Contemporary American Literature and Culture
American Studies
Anthropologies of Race & Science
Atlantic Studies
Transatlantic Studies
Cultural and Critical Studies of Race and Science
Interdisciplinary Studies
- Literary and Cultural Studies
- Media Studies
- Science and Technology Studies
Courses
- ENGL-1102: English Composition II
- LCC-3112: Evolution&Industrial Age
- LCC-3116: Sci, Tech& Postmodernism
- LCC-3118: Sci, Tech&American Empire
- LCC-3208: African-Amer Lit/Cult
- LCC-3210: Ethnicity-Amer Culture
- LCC-3306: Science,Technology& Race
- LCC-3510: American Culture II
- LCC-4102: Senior Thesis
- LMC-2000: Intro-Lit, Media, & Comm
- LMC-2350: Intro to Social Justice
- LMC-3116: Sci Tech & Postmodernisms
- LMC-3118: Sci Tech&American Empire
- LMC-3202: Studies in Fiction
- LMC-3208: African-Amer Lit/Cult
- LMC-3209: Asian Amer Lit & Culture
- LMC-3210: Ethnicity American Cult
- LMC-3212: Women, Lit & Culture
- LMC-3316: Postcolonialism
- LMC-3511: American Lit & Culture
- LMC-3518: Lit/Cult Postmodernism
- LMC-3520: The Graphic Novel
- LMC-4000: Senior Seminar in LMC
- LMC-4000: Senior Seminar in LMC: Empire and the Atlantic World
- LMC-4102: Senior Thesis
- LMC-4200: Seminar Lit/Cult Theory: Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
- LMC-8803: Special Topics
- LMC-8803: Special Topics: Transnational Networks
- LMC-8910: Special Problems: Literary and Cultural Theory
Publications
Selected Publications
Books
- Roots in the Air: How Black Women Unsettled Archives of Atlantic Slavery
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2027
- Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830- 1940
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2016
In the 19th century, personhood was a term of regulation and discipline through which slaves, criminals, and others, could be “made and unmade,” as scholars like Colin Dayan and others have argued. Yet it was precisely the fraught, uncontainable nature of personhood that necessitated its constant legislation, wherein its meaning could be both contested and controlled.
Examining scientific and literary narratives, Farooq’s Undisciplined encourages an alternative consideration of personhood, one that emerges from evolutionary and ethnographic discourse. Moving chronologically from 1830 to 1940, Farooq explores the scientific and cultural entanglements of Atlantic travelers in and beyond the Darwin era, and invites us to attend more closely to the consequences of mobility and contact on disciplines and persons. Bringing together an innovative group of readings—from field journals, diaries, letters, and testimonies to novels, stage plays, and audio recordings—Farooq advocates for a reconsideration of science, personhood, and the priority of race for the field of American studies. Whether expressed as narratives of acculturation, or as acts of resistance against the camera, the pen, or the shackle, these stories of the studied subjects of the Atlantic world add a new chapter to debates about personhood and disciplinarity in this era that actively challenged legal, social, and scientific categorizations.
Book - Editors
- Handbook of Literature and Science Since 1900, co-edited with Members of the Triangle Collective
Date: November 2020
Journal Articles
- It’s After the End of the World, Don’t We Know That Yet?: On Coalitions and Refusals from the Other Side of Time
In: American Literature [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2028
- “A Useful Delusion: Valentine Farm and the Flight for Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad”
In: Utopian Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2019
- “Creolizing Cultures: Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ethnographic Personhood in the Twentieth Century,” Studies in the Humanities 41: 1, 2
In: Studies in the Humanities [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2015
- “Of Science and Excess: Jacob Riis, Anzia Yezierska, and the Ethnographic Turn in Immigrant Fiction,” American Studies 53.4
In: American Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2014
- “National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti”
In: Journal of Transnational American Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2013
- “Narrating Sense, Ordering Nature: Darwin’s Anthropological Vision”
In: Concentric: Literary & Cultural Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2012
Chapters
- "The Communications Revolution and the Networked Path to Freedom”
In: African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, vol. 3, 1830-1850, Ed. Benjamin Fagan; Series Ed. Joycelyn Moody [Peer Reviewed]
Date: June 2021
- Lauren Coats and Nihad M. Farooq, "Regionalism in the Era of the New Deal"
In: Blackwell Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, Ed. Charles Crow [Peer Reviewed]
Date: May 2003
All Publications
Books
- Roots in the Air: How Black Women Unsettled Archives of Atlantic Slavery
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2027
- Undisciplined: Science, Ethnography, and Personhood in the Americas, 1830- 1940
In: NYU Press: American and the Long Nineteenth Century Series [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2016
In the 19th century, personhood was a term of regulation and discipline through which slaves, criminals, and others, could be “made and unmade,” as scholars like Colin Dayan and others have argued. Yet it was precisely the fraught, uncontainable nature of personhood that necessitated its constant legislation, wherein its meaning could be both contested and controlled.
Examining scientific and literary narratives, Farooq’s Undisciplined encourages an alternative consideration of personhood, one that emerges from evolutionary and ethnographic discourse. Moving chronologically from 1830 to 1940, Farooq explores the scientific and cultural entanglements of Atlantic travelers in and beyond the Darwin era, and invites us to attend more closely to the consequences of mobility and contact on disciplines and persons. Bringing together an innovative group of readings—from field journals, diaries, letters, and testimonies to novels, stage plays, and audio recordings—Farooq advocates for a reconsideration of science, personhood, and the priority of race for the field of American studies. Whether expressed as narratives of acculturation, or as acts of resistance against the camera, the pen, or the shackle, these stories of the studied subjects of the Atlantic world add a new chapter to debates about personhood and disciplinarity in this era that actively challenged legal, social, and scientific categorizations.
Book - Editors
- Handbook of Literature and Science Since 1900, co-edited with Members of the Triangle Collective
Date: November 2020
Journal Articles
- It’s After the End of the World, Don’t We Know That Yet?: On Coalitions and Refusals from the Other Side of Time
In: American Literature [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2028
- “A Useful Delusion: Valentine Farm and the Flight for Freedom in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad”
In: Utopian Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2019
- “Creolizing Cultures: Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ethnographic Personhood in the Twentieth Century,” Studies in the Humanities 41: 1, 2
In: Studies in the Humanities [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2015
- “Of Science and Excess: Jacob Riis, Anzia Yezierska, and the Ethnographic Turn in Immigrant Fiction,” American Studies 53.4
In: American Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2014
- “National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti”
In: Journal of Transnational American Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2013
- “Narrating Sense, Ordering Nature: Darwin’s Anthropological Vision”
In: Concentric: Literary & Cultural Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2012
Chapters
- "The Communications Revolution and the Networked Path to Freedom”
In: African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, vol. 3, 1830-1850, Ed. Benjamin Fagan; Series Ed. Joycelyn Moody [Peer Reviewed]
Date: June 2021
- Lauren Coats and Nihad M. Farooq, "Regionalism in the Era of the New Deal"
In: Blackwell Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, Ed. Charles Crow [Peer Reviewed]
Date: May 2003
Updated: Aug 16th, 2026 at 3:36 PM