About
Dr. Sara Awartani is an Assistant Professor of American Culture, Latina/o Studies, & Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also currently a Mellon Foundation Rooted+Relational Hybrid Fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. Before joining Michigan, she was a Global American Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and a Lecturer on Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights.
An interdisciplinary historian, her research explores twentieth-century U.S. social movements, interracial solidarities, policing, and American global power, with special attention to Latinx and Arab American histories. Dr. Awartani's first book project, Solidarities of Liberation, Visions of Empire: Puerto Rico, Palestine, and American Global Power (under advance contract) chronicles a globally expansive story of Puerto Rican radicalism, Palestinian liberation, and the United States' efforts to weaponize and police those freedom dreams.
Dr. Awartani has published in a variety of peer-reviewed and public-facing forums, including Radical History Review, Kalfou: A Comparative Ethnic Studies Journal, Society & Space, Middle East Report, and Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader. Her research has also received support across subfields, including the Puerto Rican Studies Association and the Arab American National Museum, with additional recognition by the Ford Foundation and the Latin American Studies Association.
Dr. Awartani received her Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University in 2020, and she is the recipient of the 2022 Virginia Sánchez Korrol Dissertation Award from the Puerto Rican Studies Association. She is a proud alumna of the University of Florida, where she graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in History.
Affiliations: Program in Latina/o Studies (LS)
Program in Arab and Muslim American Studies (AMAS)
National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID)
