Name: Zain Alam

Recipient Year: 2016

Major: Near Eastern Studies

Description: Zain Alam is an artist and aspiring academic seeking to explore transnational intellectual exchange between anti-colonial movements in the Islamic world. He grew up in Kennesaw, GA and graduated from Wesleyan University where he wrote a thesis on the makings of an Indian Muslim and muhajir diaspora after Partition. He returned to India on the AIF Clinton fellowship collecting oral histories as a story scholar for the 1947 Partition Archive. During this time he wrote the songs that grew into my NYC-based band and recording project, Humeysha. He was able to continue his intellectual work in Muslim South Asian history and to enrich the aesthetic, conceptual processes that inform both his creative and intellectual projects while completing his degree at Harvard University.

School Name: Harvard University

Sponsor: ISF