Razan Bayan

Biography

Razan Bayan is a Ph.D. student in the joint Peace Studies and History program with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Department of History. She holds B.A.s in Human Rights and History from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, with minors in Arabic, African/Middle Eastern Studies, and Mathematics. Razan's most recent study focused on the collective amnesia in Muslim American youth regarding the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib detention centers. Building off of her findings, Razan currently researches the construction of US collective memory (or the lack thereof) of state violence against Muslims during the War on Terror. In her dissertation, she hopes to examine the Bush administration's early responses to human rights concerns and anti-war protests as a memory-making and narrative construction project--- one that was not without public contestation. Her other research interests include securitization; US militarism and imperialism; colonial history and postcolonialism; and Islamophobia studies.