Fawzia Afzal-Khan is Professor of English at Montclair State University, and recipient of the University Distinguished Scholar Award 2009/10. She was Director of the Women and Gender Studies Program from 2009-15. 

 

She is author of six books of scholarly criticism, Cultural Imperialism: Genre and Ideology in the Indo-English Novel (Penn State Press 1993), and A Critical Stage: The Role of Secular Alternative Theatre in Pakistan (Seagull Press, 2005). She is co-editor of The PreOccupation of Postcolonial Studies (Duke University Press, 2000), and Editor of the best-selling anthology, Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Interlink Books 2005). Her memoir: Lahore with Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani Style was published by Syracuse University Press in 2010. 

​

Afzal-Khan is a trained vocalist in North Indian Classical music, a published playwright and poet, and has worked as an actor and performer for Ajoka Theatre Troupe of Pakistan, as well as with the experimental theatre collective Compagnie Faim de Siecle of which she was one of the founding members. Her one-woman show Scheherezade Goes West and plays Sext of Saudade (co-written with Annie Lanzillotto) and Jihad Against Violence (co-written with Bina Sharif) have been published in The Drama review, and performed internationally.

​

She serves as Contributing Editor on The Drama Review, and is Founding Chair of the South Asian Feminist Caucus of The National Women’s Studies Association of North America, where she also served as a member of the Governing Council. She was recently named on the Editorial Advisory Board of a new peer-reviewed e-journal published by CUNY called Arab Stages. 

​

She was awarded 2 Fulbright-Hays Fellowships to Pakistan during AY 2015-16 and has just completed her final Fulbright Specialist appointment at Forman Christian College (FCCU) in Lahore in March, 2020.   

 

She is Creative Director and Producer on an award-winning short documentary film about Pakistani Female Singers entitled Siren Song: Women Singers of Pakistan, for which she won a development grant from the National Endowment o the Humanities in 2011. Her most recent book is Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through its Women Singers (OUP: 2020), which was launched in February 2020 at the Karachi Literary Festival.