Graduate Student Profile: Md Mizanur Rahman

Md Mizanur Rahman is a 6th-year Ph.D. candidate in the Politics Department. Rahman received the Hayden V. White Summer Dissertation Fellowship for his research on anti-colonial Muslim thought. This particular award held special significance for Rahman, who is influenced by Hayden White’s work and applies it to his own research. During his fellowship, Rahman worked on a dissertation chapter that became the basis of a presentation for the Center for Cultural Studies Colloquium. We caught up with Rahman to hear about the fellowship and more.

Hi Mizan! First, congratulations on receiving the Hayden V. White Summer Dissertation Fellowship, it is a very competitive award here at UC Santa Cruz. Let’s start by hearing a bit about your research and how you became interested in the subject.

Thank you! It is a profound honor, indeed, and I’m thrilled to have been awarded the fellowship. My research examines how anticolonial Muslim thinkers conceptualized their political vision in the transitional moment of late colonial and postcolonial South Asia. It situates the question of individual, morality, and divine sovereignty at the center of anticolonial Muslim political thought and theorizes a political vision that is antistatist, local, and collective. The core of this vision, it suggests, remains Islamic morality and ethical practices in everyday life. My research theorizes this anticolonial vision through a systematic and contextual examination of the ideas and political actions of four South Asian Muslim thinkers and political actors: Abul Hashim (1905–1974), Maulana Akram Khan (1868–1968), Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani (1880–1976), and Kazi Abdul Wadud (1894-1970). It is the first such systematic English-language treatment of the ideas and actions of these influential but academically overlooked South Asian Muslim thinkers. My research not only traces their critiques of modern politics and its orientalist, secular, progressivist narratives from a distinctly Islamic perspective but also shows possible alternatives to them, drawing from Islamic conceptual resources and unique experiences of Muslim communities in South Asia.

I arrived at this research project during my graduate studies. I was initially interested in contemporary debates regarding Islam and modernity, the politics of Islamic seminaries, and Islam in the public sphere in South Asia, specifically in Bangladesh. During my undergraduate and master’s studies, I conducted research projects around these subjects and published academic and popular pieces related to them. However, moving to UCSC and taking graduate seminars, my interest shifted towards a more conceptual and historical direction. I gradually developed interests in more foundational questions of politics and social life, such as popular sovereignty, the individual, political community, and the state. With my growing interest in Islamic political thought, I began to investigate how Muslim traditions of thought and practice engage with these foundational concepts of modern politics, or whether they are merely the recipients of what is produced in the Euro-Atlantic world. My dissertation research on anticolonial Muslim thought stems from such inquiries.

Thank you for walking us through it! Could you talk more specifically about why you were drawn to this fellowship and how your research is connected to Hayden White’s work?

Hayden White’s work and intellectual orientation have profoundly influenced me, and I am grateful to receive support from a fellowship established in his memory. His work greatly informs my dissertation research. His argument on history writing has been particularly generative for my work. My dissertation frame especially gets inspired by his invitation for the liberation of the present from the “burden of history,” as I do not focus on how faithfully the Muslim thinkers appropriated ideas and theological arguments from the Islamic past but examine how they give new political meanings to concepts in their particular social and political conditions in 20th-century South Asia. In other words, my work broadly falls within the argument for historicization and discontinuity thought, the historiographical debate that White and his colleagues developed.

This fall, you presented at the Center for Cultural Studies colloquium on the chapter you worked on for your fellowship. What was that experience like, and what were your takeaways?

Yes, it was a great experience to present my work at the Center for Cultural Studies colloquium. What I presented at the colloquium was a relevant project, but it was not precisely the dissertation chapter I worked on during the fellowship. In my presentation, I integrated insights from the chapter I developed with an observation derived from a student-led mass uprising that was staged in Bangladesh during the summer of 2024. The uprising now known as the July Revolution ousted the long-standing despotic ruler and opened up new possibilities for thinking about politics and social life. In my presentation, I suggested that the July revolution is a struggle to reclaim people’s sovereignty and to recover their right to speak and reinstate their dignity.

The presentation was highly beneficial to me. As a graduate student, it not only offered me a rare opportunity to speak to a group of highly informed scholars but also helped give me feedback on my project. Especially, it was a valuable learning experience that taught me how to merge historical and theoretical works with contemporary political events.

You are also a graduate affiliate at the Center for South Asian Studies housed at The Humanities Institute. Can you tell us more about how you are sharing your work and connecting with other scholars through the center?

The Center for South Asian Studies has been supportive of my scholarship in various capacities. Apart from being an active participant at the center’s talks, seminars, workshops, and social events, I have also been part of two very productive programs associated with the center. I was a co-organizer of the graduate student-led South Asia reading circle, where graduate students and faculty with diverse specializations meet to read and discuss major classical and contemporary books from their area of studies. It has helped me to read a diverse set of books, learn various disciplinary lenses to analyze them, and develop critical insight relevant to my dissertation project.

I am extremely honored to receive the Hayden White Fellowship, not only because it supported my dissertation writing, but most importantly, a fellowship under Hayden V. White’s name, whose scholarship I greatly admire and use in my work.

The other program I am part of is the South Asia writing workshop. It is also a graduate student-focused platform where we meet regularly to share our papers and get feedback. It created an opportunity to know each other’s work better and helped develop dissertation chapters and write stand-alone articles for publications.

Moreover, the Center for South Asian Studies has launched a new initiative to support graduate students’ summer research with a fellowship from which my work has benefited. Overall, it serves as an excellent platform for research support, sharing work, and facilitating social meetups.

It is terrific you have been a part of so many programs at The Humanities Institute. Why was this fellowship and the opportunities to present with Cultural Studies and a poster for the Graduate Symposium important for you as a scholar? How do you plan to share your research in the future?

I am extremely honored to receive the Hayden White Fellowship, not only because it supported my dissertation writing, but most importantly, a fellowship under Hayden V. White’s name, whose scholarship I greatly admire and use in my work. This recognition of my work gave me confidence as a scholar, and I believe it will help me in my future academic ventures, like getting other fellowships and grants, and being competitive in the job market.

The opportunities to present my works with cultural studies and a poster for the graduate symposium significantly contributed to my scholarship and professional development. While the cultural studies talk was an excellent platform to share my work with academics, the graduate symposium was a wonderful means of presenting my work to a broader audience, including those with little or no background knowledge of my work. It helped me to think about my research in more non-technical terms and articulate it in accessible language for general audiences.

I would welcome any future opportunity from THI programs to share my work in the form of talks, workshops, and more public-oriented events like graduate symposiums.

Thank you so much! To wrap up, what is one part of living in Santa Cruz and attending UCSC that everyone should experience?

Santa Cruz is an incredibly beautiful place to live. I remember I used to tell my friends before moving to UCSC, “I am going to Santa Cruz to take refuge in nature for five years.” After living here for five years, I am in love with the hills, forests, and cliffs that we have just a few minutes’ drive from campus. I believe living in such a rich and pleasing environment is a rare opportunity, and I think people should appreciate it and spend more time with nature before they leave UCSC.

Banner Image:  An ordinary flag vendor in Dhaka is looking at Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani’s graffiti painted following the July Revolution in Bangladesh in 2024. It shows how Bhasani argued for an inclusive society and system of governance.