Faculty Member Since 2015
Moon Charania is chair of the International Studies Department at Spelman College and Affiliate faculty in Comparative Women’s Studies.
Moon Charania is a feminist scholar whose research explores the psychosocial dimensions of the lives of women of color; she investigates social, political, and intimate issues in relation to gender and sexuality, violence and care, racism and the diasporic experience. Dr. Charania is an Associate Professor of International Studies at Spelman College and the 2024-25 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of two books: Archive of Tongues: An Intimate History of Brownness (Duke University Press, 2023) and Will the Real Pakistani Woman Please Stand Up: Empire, Visual Culture, and the Brown Female Body (McFarland 2015). Her most recent book, Archive of Tongues: An Intimate History of Brownness, has been recognized in the 2023 Year in Books in Critical and Cultural Theory, included in the State of the Field by Meridians journal, and has been presented nationally and internationally at the London School of Economics, Oxford University, University of Paris, American University in Cairo, the American Library in Paris, the London Library, the Center for Fiction, the Center for the Arts of Translation, Busboys and Poets, Lost City Books, and other bookstores across the US, Canada and Europe.
In addition to her books, Charania’s work has appeared in leading journals such as Camera Obscura, Feminist Studies, Feminist Theory, Society and Space, and Sexualities, and her commentary has been solicited in public forums such as USA Today, NBC, Boston Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. She has previously been a fellow at the Emory University Psychoanalytic Society, Emory University James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, the National Humanities Center, as the Beyer Resident in Queer Studies at St. Lawrence University, and as a Fulbright Specialist to develop Women, Gender and Feminist Studies in the Global South.
Charania is currently working on a third book, Nous Femme Les Dérangées [We Women, The Deranged]: Essays on Brown Women and Pain in America
Girls
Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Race, Sex and Empire
Regarding the Pain of Others
Black Queer Studies
Feminism, Sexuality, and Islam
Senior Seminar
Transnational Feminism, Queer of Color Critique, Psychoanalysis, Postcolonial Studies
New Book: Archive of Tongues: An Intimate History of Brownness (Duke U. Press)
2024 – The International Library: Archive of Tongues: A Book Talk:
2021 - “Brown Girls, White Feminism, and the Necropolitics of War.” Global Media Cultures Podcast. September.
2021 - “Jose Munoz, The Sense of Brown: A Review.” Society and Space, June 28.
2020 - “Is Massachusetts Shaming Divorced Parents?” Boston Magazine. November 25.
2018 - “Pride in Pakistan: An Interview with Moon Charania.” In Investigating Social Problems, 2nd edition, Ed. Treviño, A Javier. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. January.
2017 - “Campaign calls on colleges to end rape culture.” NBC News. November 15.