Dana Olwan’s resume is already impressive, but the women’s and gender studies scholar’s recent recognition from not one, but two major organizations is extraordinary, according to Gwendolyn Pough, department chair.
Dana Olwan
Olwan, who joined the Women’s and Gender Studies Department in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2011, was just awarded a Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) fellowship grant for her research titled “Traveling Discourses: Gender Violence and the Representational Politics of the ‘Honor Crime.’” Within a day of receiving word about the PARC grant, Olwan was informed she was the only junior faculty member selected to lead a National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Curriculum Institute workshop as an emerging leader in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies.
“It is such a huge honor to be recognized by PARC and NWSA,” says Olwan. “Women’s and gender studies is evolving at a rapid pace, and it is exciting to be part of a national conversation on curriculum building and pedagogical issues in our discipline.”
Olwan has served on the faculty at Queen’s University and Simon Fraser University. Her writings on the honor crime, indigenous solidarities, Palestinian cultural and literary resistance, and Muslim feminisms have appeared in the Canadian Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Settler Colonial Studies, Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy: Contested Imaginaries in post-9/11 Cultural Practice and the Feminist Wire.
“Dana is one of the best and brightest young scholars in her field today. These honors represent just the tip of the iceberg for Dana,” says Pough. “The fact that she was the only junior faculty member selected to speak at the NWSA Institute is a testament to the renowned scholar she is becoming. I know I speak on behalf of the entire department and the college in saying we are truly proud of her. Her commitment to her research and to the education of her students is inspiring.”
In 2011, Olwan was named the Future Minority Studies Postdoctoral Fellow where she began studying honor killings and the transnational representational politics of gendered and sexual violence. She earned a Ph.D. from Queen’s University and a master’s degree from Georgetown University. Olwan’s research and teaching interests are expansive and include transnational feminist theories of race, gender and religion; gendered and sexual violence and honor crime; representations of Arab and Muslim women; Muslim feminism; and Middle East studies, settler colonialism and indigenous and feminist solidarities. She teaches a variety of classes at SU while engaging in rigorous research projects.
