Maytha Alhassen

Maytha Alhassen, PhD, primarily sees her labor as that of a freedom doula and an engaged wit/h/ness reviving the traditions of the feral femme. She is a historian, journalist, arts-based social justice organizer, and mending practitioner.

Dr. Alhassen, a Harvard Religion and Public Life Fellow in Entertainment and Media, entered Hollywood as a TV & Film writer and producer, most recently as a Co-Executive Producer for the Hulu series "Ramy," Executive Producer of the upcoming series "American Muslims: A History Revealed," and Producer for "Edgware Road".

As a journalist, she worked as an on-air host for Al Jazeera English and The Young Turks, also field reporting for such outlets as CNN, Huffington Post, Mic, Boston Review, The Baffler, and CounterPunch. In 2017, Alhassen was awarded a TED residency that culminated in the TED talk “A Poem for Syria: Beyond a Geography of Violence” about her ancestral relationship to Syria and work with displaced communities in the region.

As a scholar, Alhassen holds a PhD in American studies and Ethnicity from University of Southern California, MA in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, and a BA in Political Science and Arabic and Islamic studies from University of California, Los Angeles. Alhassen co-edited a volume on narratives from the 2011 Arab uprisings "Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions" (White Cloud Press, 2012) and authored the report "Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes and How to Transform Them" (Pop Culture Collaborative, 2018) as a Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Fellow. She has also authored numerous academic articles.