Sanober Umar
Associate Professor
Office: Ross Building, S646
Ext: 33605
Email: sumar@yorku.ca
Primary website: https://yorku.academia.edu/SanoberUmar
Dr. Umar is currently working on a book manuscript which explores the relationship (and critical distinctions) between caste and racial hierarchies, and how these entanglements-along with gender and class dynamics-inform the figure of the Muslim in Indian and global politics. Parallel to the aforementioned project, Dr Umar is also a Principal Investigator for a SSHRC IDG funded project that explores the histories, politics, and theories behind the idea of the diasporic/exiled "public intellectual." This in-depth research seeks to examine the systematic persecution of scholars-at-risk from diverse marginalized communities in the age of rising social media disinformation, far right global populism, and the changing political landscape of 'multicultural Canada.' Dr. Umar's other areas of expertise and interest includes investigating the transnational politics of racializing and gendering Islam as a religion in mainstream and academic discursive productions of a universalized and flexible "Muslim World."
In addition to her multidisciplinary background and academic training across three continents, Dr. Umar's transnational policy work experience on issues related to labour, gender, migration, and asylum laws has also informed her academic work. She has worked with organizations such as the International Organization of Migration (UN), World Vision (Geneva), and the Centre for Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Umar is fluent in both Hindi and Urdu. Her mixed-method approaches centre feminist ethnography, historical archives, oral histories, political/social economy, biopolitics, and local/transnational flows in discursive/material/visual culture analysis.
Degrees
PhD History, Queen's UniversityMSc Migration Studies, University of Oxford
M.A International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development (Geneva)
BA History, St Stephen's College, University of Delhi
Research Interests
Amarasingam, Amarnath, Sanober Umar, and Shweta Desai. 2022. "“Fight, Die, and If Required Kill”: Hindu Nationalism, Misinformation, and Islamophobia in India" Religions 13, no. 5: 380. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13050380
'City of Tenuous Peace - Rethinking Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb,' Journal of Cultural Anthropology, Hotspot Series on Majoritarian Politics in South Asia (2021).
'The “Other” Muslim: Spatial-Temporal Cartographies of the Gendered Muslim World' in Religion and Gender, Vol 11, Issue No. 1, pp 113-120 (2021).
‘The Identity of Language and the Language of Erasure: Urdu and the Racialized- Decastification of the ‘Backward Musalmaan’ in India,’ in The Journal of Caste and Global Exclusion (Special Issue on the Persistence of Caste) Vol 1, Issue No. 1, pp. 175-199 (2020).
'Creating the “Citizen Enemy” – The Impact of the Enemy Property Act on India’s Muslims ’ in The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, London: UK, Vol 39, Issue No. 4, pp. 457-477 (2019).
‘When Birds of a Feather Flock Together: The Requiem for Secularism in the Indian Parliament’ in The Journal of Indian Secularism, Mumbai: India, Vol 18, Issue No. 2, pp. 5-14 (2014).
Dr. Umar is currently working on a book manuscript which explores the relationship (and critical distinctions) between caste and racial hierarchies, and how these entanglements-along with gender and class dynamics-inform the figure of the Muslim in Indian and global politics. Parallel to the aforementioned project, Dr Umar is also a Principal Investigator for a SSHRC IDG funded project that explores the histories, politics, and theories behind the idea of the diasporic/exiled "public intellectual." This in-depth research seeks to examine the systematic persecution of scholars-at-risk from diverse marginalized communities in the age of rising social media disinformation, far right global populism, and the changing political landscape of 'multicultural Canada.' Dr. Umar's other areas of expertise and interest includes investigating the transnational politics of racializing and gendering Islam as a religion in mainstream and academic discursive productions of a universalized and flexible "Muslim World."
In addition to her multidisciplinary background and academic training across three continents, Dr. Umar's transnational policy work experience on issues related to labour, gender, migration, and asylum laws has also informed her academic work. She has worked with organizations such as the International Organization of Migration (UN), World Vision (Geneva), and the Centre for Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Umar is fluent in both Hindi and Urdu. Her mixed-method approaches centre feminist ethnography, historical archives, oral histories, political/social economy, biopolitics, and local/transnational flows in discursive/material/visual culture analysis.
Degrees
PhD History, Queen's UniversityMSc Migration Studies, University of Oxford
M.A International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development (Geneva)
BA History, St Stephen's College, University of Delhi
Research Interests
All Publications
Amarasingam, Amarnath, Sanober Umar, and Shweta Desai. 2022. "“Fight, Die, and If Required Kill”: Hindu Nationalism, Misinformation, and Islamophobia in India" Religions 13, no. 5: 380. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13050380
'City of Tenuous Peace - Rethinking Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb,' Journal of Cultural Anthropology, Hotspot Series on Majoritarian Politics in South Asia (2021).
'The “Other” Muslim: Spatial-Temporal Cartographies of the Gendered Muslim World' in Religion and Gender, Vol 11, Issue No. 1, pp 113-120 (2021).
‘The Identity of Language and the Language of Erasure: Urdu and the Racialized- Decastification of the ‘Backward Musalmaan’ in India,’ in The Journal of Caste and Global Exclusion (Special Issue on the Persistence of Caste) Vol 1, Issue No. 1, pp. 175-199 (2020).
'Creating the “Citizen Enemy” – The Impact of the Enemy Property Act on India’s Muslims ’ in The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, London: UK, Vol 39, Issue No. 4, pp. 457-477 (2019).
‘When Birds of a Feather Flock Together: The Requiem for Secularism in the Indian Parliament’ in The Journal of Indian Secularism, Mumbai: India, Vol 18, Issue No. 2, pp. 5-14 (2014).
