Iman AbdoulKarim, Ph.D.

Biography

Faculty Member Since 2026

Iman AbdoulKarim, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Philosophy and Religious Studies department. She is an intellectual historian and theorist of religion whose work centers Black religion, modern spirituality, feminist theory, and U.S. Black nationalism. Her work is driven by a deep interest in the spiritual modes of knowing Black femmes use to keep on keeping on in daily life and in the struggle toward Black liberation.

She is currently completing her manuscript, Knowledge from Self: Twentieth-Century Black Muslima Thought, which offers a feminist history of twentieth-century Black nationalism by recovering the spiritual intellectualism at the heart of Black Muslima calls for self-determination in the United States.

AbdoulKarim received her Ph.D. from Yale University in the Departments of Religious Studies and Black Studies. Prior, she was a predoctoral fellow for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Africana Muslims and Genealogies of White Supremacy at the University of Michigan; a U.S.–U.K. Fulbright Scholar at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Islam in the U.K.; and an academic and career advisor at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School.

A committed public scholar, AbdoulKarim has participated in several grant-funded projects. In 2025, in partnership with New Haven community organizations, she co-organized a series of public programs, including a three-day conference celebrating Malcolm X’s centennial. She also launched "Name It!," a podcast that makes critical race and feminist theory accessible to nonacademic audiences in 2023.

In Spring 2026, she will teach Intro to the Study of Religion and Women and Islam.

Education

Ph.D., Religious Studies and Black Studies, with Distinction
Yale University, December 2025

M.A., Islam in Contemporary Britain, with Distinction
Cardiff University, September 2018
U.S.–U.K. Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar

B.A., Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, cum laude
Dartmouth College, June 2017

Courses Taught

• Introduction to the Study of Religion
• Introduction to Islam
• Women and Islam

Select Publications

• “Captive Spirituality: Religion, Black Nationalism, and ‘Genius’ in the Republic of New Afrika.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, forthcoming.
• “Black Muslima Thought.” In An Introduction to Black Muslims in the United States, edited by Kayla Renée Wheeler. Routledge, under contract.
• “The Art of Mapping Black Women’s Interiors.” The Immanent Frame, September 3, 2025.
• “‘Islam is Black Lives Matter’: The Role of Religion and Gender in Muslim Women’s Activism.” In Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter: Essays on a Moment and a Movement, edited by Christopher Cameron and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 206–222. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2021.