Name: Hamza Zahurullah

Recipient Type: Scholarship Recipient

Recipient Year: 2019

School Name: Stanford University

Major: Media Studies (Media Advocacy)

Description: Hamza Zahurullah completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University majoring in Film and Media Studies. A second generation Indian-American Muslim, Hamza found that studying film was an opportunity to re-discover his Indian cultural heritage and combat the processes of cultural assimilation faced by immigrant families. His interests lie in the intersection between genre cinema (science fiction, fantasy, crime thriller) aesthetics and narratives dealing with race, gender, and Muslim identity. The film that most influenced both his taste for movies and interest in studying Muslim political identity in film is The Battle of Algiers: a 1966 Italian film that gives a fictional account of the Algerian Revolution. While at Stanford, he also was a Peer Advisor in the Department of Art & Art History and co-President of the Stanford Film Society.

Sponsor: Afzal Family Foundation