Deepa Kumar

Dr. Deepa Kumar is Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is affiliated faculty with the Women and Gender Studies and Sociology Departments as well as the Center for Middle East Studies and Race and Ethnicity Studies.

Her work is driven by an active engagement with the key issues that characterize our era--neoliberalism and imperialism. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007), is about the power of collective struggle in effectively challenging the priorities of neoliberalism.

If neoliberal globalization characterizes the economic logic of our age, the “war on terror” has come to define its political logic. Kumar began her research into the politics of empire shortly after the tumultuous events of 9/11.

Her second book titled Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket Books, 2012), looks at how the "Muslim enemy" has historically been mobilized to suit the goals of empire.