Affiliated Graduate Program Faculty Member

Deepa Kumar is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Middle Eastern  Studiesat Rutgers University. Her work is driven by an active engagement with the key issues that characterize our era--neoliberalism and imperialism. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007), is about the power of collective struggle in effectively challenging the priorities of neoliberalism. Her second book titled Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012), looks at how the "Muslim enemy" has historically been mobilized to suit the goals of empire. She is currently working on a third book on the discourses of terrorism within the mainstream media and in the political sphere in the US. Dr. Kumar is a much sought after public speaker and has spoken at dozens of university and community forums on a range of topics: Islamophobia, Political Islam, US foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia, the Arab Spring, women and Islam etc. She has shared her expertise in numerous media outlets including BBC, NPR, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Hurriyat Daily News (Turkey), Iran Fars News (Iran), Al Arabiya (UAE), and other national and international news media outlets.