Sana Haroon
History and Asian Studies
Biography
Sana Haroon is an historian of Muslim culture and society in South Asia and holds a joint appointment in History and Asian Studies. She teaches courses on the history of modern South Asia, Islam and the Indian Ocean world. She runs the South Asian Connections teaching program that connects classes at UMass Boston with classes in South Asia. She also leads the Life Stories from the Islamic World Oral History Project at UMass Boston.
Area of Expertise
Social History, Oral History, Spatial History, Islam, South Asian Studies, Borderlands
Degrees
Ph.D. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004
B.A. Yale University, 1998
Professional Publications & Contributions
Recent publications (select):
The Mosques of Colonial South Asia: A Social and Legal History of Muslim Worship. London: I. B. Tauris, 2021, i-xi, 1-238.
Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland. London: Hurst and Co., 2007; New York: Columbia University Press, 2008 and Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011, i-xii, 1-246.
Co-authored with Sameen Mohsin Ali, “Creating an Oral History Archive of Government Work: The Women in Public Service in Pakistan Project,” Oral History Review 51, 1 (2024): 155-178.
“Women’s Participation in the Central Superior Services of Pakistan 1973-2020,” Contemporary South Asia (2023): 1-14.
“Tribal Elders and Social Inequity in Pakistan’s Northwestern Borderlands 1947-2018,” Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions 199 (July-Sept 2022): 45-66.
“The Spatial Imaginaries of Mujaddidī Sufis and Political Integration in the Northwestern Borderlands of Colonial India”, Journal of Contemporary Religion 36 no. 2 (2021): 1-22.
“Custodianship of the Shahidganj in Colonial Lahore: Land, Land Use and the Formation of Religious Community,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 54 no. 2 [May 26] (2017): 147-182.
“Contextualizing the Deobandi Approach to Congregation and Management of Mosques in Colonial North India,” Journal of Islamic Studies 27 no. 4 (2016): 1-27.
“Reformism and Orthodox Practice in Early Nineteenth-Century North India: Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed reconsidered,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21 no. 2 (2011): 177-198.
“The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and its Implications in Colonial India and Pakistan,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18 no 1 (2008): 47-70.
Additional Information
Sana Haroon is Professor of History and Asian Studies at UMass Boston. She works on borderlands, Muslim social organization 19th and 20th century South Asia and historical methodologies in the study of Muslim South Asia. She co-directed the Women in Public Service in Pakistan Oral History Project at LUMS university in Lahore and leads the Life Stories of the Islamic World Oral History Project at UMass Boston.
Prior to joining the faculty at UMass Boston Professor Haroon held the Isobel Thornley Fellowship at SOAS 2003-2004, the Past and Present Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research in 2004-2005, and the Malathy Singh Lectureship and postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University 2011-2012. She has taught at the University of East London, at Zayed University in Dubai, at IBA-University of Karachi, at Yale University, and was visiting professor at LUMS in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences 2019-2020