Maytha Alhassen

Activist, Artist, Brainstormer, Connector, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Explorer, Global soul, Idea generator, Journalist, Performer, World traveler, Writer/Editor

maytha alhassen recently defended her doctoral dissertation in American Studies and Ethnicity from University of Southern California (USC) and is currently a TED Resident. She studies historical encounters between Black internationalism and the Arab diaspora, race & ethnicity, social justice & the arts, travel & global flows, gender, media and narrative healing. Her work in and outside academia bridges the worlds of social justice, academic research and artistic expression. For the last five years, she has been a guest co-host/digital producer on Al Jazeera English's social media focused program "The Stream" and appears as a guest on CNN, BET, Fusion, The Young Turks and Pivot. alhassen has written for CNN, Huffington Post, Mic, CounterPunch, La Vanguardia, academic journals and other online and print publications. In 2012, alhassen co-edited a book on the Arab uprisings, youth and social media Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions. As both artist and organizer, alhassen performed and wrote for internationally touring play "Hijabi Monologues" (composed of lived experiences scribed by Muslim women) and worked with arts-based social justice organization Blackout Arts Collective. As a member of the collective, she facilitated creative literacy workshops with incarcerated youth at Rikers Island, assisted in organizing a Hip Hop Film Festival in the prison's high school and wrote an introduction on the role of love in dismantling the prison industrial complex for an anthology of the youth's poetry and visual art titled "One Mic." Collaborating with the Office of Student Affairs, alhassen established and designed the Social Justice Institute at Occidental College to train fellows in social justice praxis. Additionally, Alhassen teaches yoga to people & communities seeking mending, is a committed global wanderluster, and pens poems sub rosa.

american islam, american studies, arab americans, arabs, bellydancing, diaspora, ethnicity, feminism, healing, history, islam, journalism, languages, love, malcolm x, media, middle east, narratives, oral histories, poetry, race, refugees, social justice, social movements, somatics, syria, traveling, women, yoga

TED Residency Spring 2017