Shamara Alhassan

Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is a transdisciplinary Africana Studies scholar of religion, women’s studies, and history. A long-time transnational ethnographer focusing on African and African Diasporic women's radical epistemologies, she is interested in the ways Rastafari women build Pan-African communities and combat anti-black gendered racism and religious discrimination in the Caribbean and Africa. Rooted in her research interests, her award-winning forthcoming book is tentatively titled, Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women's Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World. Alongside her single-authored book, she is the co-editor of the book, Black Women and Da Rona: Community, Consciousness, and Ethics of Care which was published with the Feminist Wire Series Books at University of Arizona Press in 2023. While Alhassan is an avid writer, she also creates documentary films. She directed her first feature-length documentary film in 2009, entitled Awodie: Re-membering the Womb, which is the first film to chronicle the lived experiences of Rastafari women in Ghana. Her published work also appears in Caliban’s Readings, Callaloo, the National Political Science Review, Religions, The Black Scholar, IDEAZ journal, the Political Theology Network and the Immanent Frame. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies with a focus on the Black Experience in the Americas in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. She serves as the 2022-2024 Secretary of Rastafari Thought with the Caribbean Philosophical Association and she is a 2023-2024 Arts Fellow with the Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities and Cultures at Princeton University.