Falguni ShethDepartment Chair - WGSSProfessor - WGSS

Falguni A. Sheth is Professor of Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. She holds a degree in Philosophy. She has published articles on race, hybrid identities, culturally sanctioned violence against immigrants and populations of color, and on the methods by which the state legally establishes the persecution of Muslim women and other women of color. She has also published several books, including Toward a Political Philosophy of Race (SUNY Press, 2009), which considers how racial divisions preserve state power. Her latest book, Unruly Women: Race, Neoliberalism, and the Hijab (Oxford University Press forthcoming 2021) explores the racial dynamics of juridical discourses that discipline Black Muslim and Muslim women of color in the United States. Sheth’s areas of teaching and research include postcolonial theory, transnational feminist studies, critical philosophy of race and race studies, feminist political theory, anticolonial and empire studies, and political and legal philosophy.

Sheth’s research explores the intersections of violence, security, and political ontology as these lead to technologies of race and racialization as a strategy of political and social management of various populations. Tackling these issues requires the integration of the philosophy of race, critical race theory, postcolonial feminist theory, and political philosophy to expand the scope of feminist theory to include “feminist security studies of race.” By illuminating how the legacies of war, violence, and colonialism are transformed via law, public policies, and cultural institutions to appear neutral, just, and liberal-democratic, her work reveals the mechanisms by which legal and cultural institutions work to maintain a veneer of security on behalf of their dominant populations.