Su’ad Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist originally from Brooklyn, NY. She is the curator of Umi’s Archive, a multimedia project documenting Black and Muslim histories and co-founder of Sapelo Square, a digital media and education collective on Black Muslim in the US. Su’ad’s first book, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States, is a field defining study on Islam and hip hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the United States. Su’ad’s written scholarly work on Islam and hip hop is accompanied by her performance-based work including her one woman solo show, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life. In 2018, Su’ad was profiled as one of 25 influential American Muslims by CNN and she has written broadly for outlets including: The Root, the Washington Post, Vice and Ebony Magazine, and has appeared on Al Jazeera English. Su’ad received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University, is a graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed the Islamic Studies diploma program of the Institute at Abu Nour University (Damascus). Su’ad is currently an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.
As an ISM fellow Su’ad will complete of a creative work, a solo performance ethnography, based on her project Umi’s Archive. The performance will introduce audiences, through dance, music, and monologue, into the worlds and world-making of Black Muslim women as racialized, gendered and spiritual subjects.