Dr. Sylvia Chan-Malik is a scholar of American studies, critical race and ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies, and religious studies. Her research focuses on the history of Islam in the United States, specifically the lives of U.S. Muslim women, Black American Islam, and the rise of anti-Muslim racism in 20th-21st-century America, and more broadly, the intersections of race, gender, and religion in struggles for social justice and racial liberation. Sylvia is a core faculty member in the Departments of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and affiliate graduate faculty for the Department of Religion at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She teaches courses on Race and Ethnicity in the U.S., Islam in/and America, Race and Religion, Social Justice, Food Justice, and Islam and Gender.
She is the author of Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color and American Islam (NYU Press, 2018), which was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine, as well as various scholarly essays in academic journals and anthologies. She is currently working on two book projects: (1) A Part of Islam: A Journey through Muslim America, which offers an essential history of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. for a general audience (Penguin Random House, forthcoming 2026), and, (2) The Soul of Liberation: Race, Religion, and Struggles for Freedom in America, which examines the roles of soul and spirit in 20th-21st-century U.S.-based racial liberation movements. An avid gardener, she is also interested in issues of food justice and food sovereignty, and is developing an online archive of Black farmers and other farmers of color in the U.S.
Professor Chan-Malik speaks frequently on issues of U.S. Muslim politics and culture, Islam and gender, and racial and gender politics in the U.S. Her writing and commentary have appeared in venues such as The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Slate, Mic.com, The Intercept, Middle East Eye, PRI, HuffPost, Patheos, Religion News Service, and more. She was a primary academic advisor for the forthcoming PBS documentary American Muslims: A History Revealed (2024), which showcases her research on Black American Muslim women in the early 20th century. She is also featured in the 2020 PBS documentary The Black Church.
In 2023-24, she led a yearlong Sawyer Mellon seminar at Rutgers University-New Brunswick titled "Afterlives of Liberation: Anti-Racist Praxis for the 21st-Century," which brought scholars, artists, and activists from all over the world to campus to discuss what racial liberation means to them in the 21st-century. In 2021, she was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University, and in 2018, she was recognized with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education by Rutgers SAS.
She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2009) and an M.F.A. from Mills College in Creative Writing.
