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Love. You immediately established love in your classroom. It was a love for being in the same space as those who have shown up. The first time I felt love for my mind was in the space of the classroom you created. You introduced me to Memmi. And with that began, my journey for self-love and recognition.  Pride. When you…

Dear Dr. Barlas, As you know, brevity is not my strength. For whatever reason, I have not mastered the skill of providing quick and concise questions and/or answers. I constantly think about puzzles and contradictions, and I rarely draw conclusions that are fulfilling. As frustrating as it is for everyone else (administrators, teachers, students, religious…

Any student of Dr. Barlas, was, every day, witness to a person who without fail embodied what it means to be intellectually honest. Honest, without ever diminishing or discounting academic rigor. In an age when talk has become increasingly cheap, wherein arguments are made on statement alone, Professor Barlas remains a living example of what…

I first met Dr. Asma Barlas at a CSCRE discussion series back in 2013. In fact I specifically remember the event; Ruth Wilson Gilmore was getting ready to give a talk on prison abolition and I was standing in the hallway getting ready to enter. It was the briefest of encounters folded up into the…

Dear Asma, When I first heard of you your reputation quite literally preceded you. It was in a cryptic comment from my academic advisor, the arcane and wise Ron Denson. I should take a class with you, he said, “She has really a different kind of pedagogy.” From there, likely I witnessed you unleash precise…

I took Asma’s course, “Unlearning Eurocentrism” in the fall semester of my senior year of college in 2010. I remember the class being really small (<10 students) and us, sitting in a semicircle in either Smiddy Hall or the CSCRE building at the furthest end of campus.  The class was a room on the first…

When I began graduate school at New York University, after completing a BA at Ithaca College, I experienced a number of jarring realizations. There were some that were probably typical of most graduate students newly arrived to NYU: security is tight, NYC is an extraordinarily distracting (and expensive) city to be a grad student in,…

I had only one formal class with Asma —Understanding Islam— but it set off an intellectual and personal relationship that has marked my development ever since. I can hardly characterize the impact here, but I would love to offer a few snapshots. When Asma and I first crossed paths, I was a senior at Ithaca…

Dear Asma, I know these letters will be rendered public, but I find it most natural to try and write to you directly, as I would for the journals you assigned throughout most semesters. By designating those reflective assignments for our informal writing and expecting a more ‘academic’ analysis in our midterm and final papers,…

Asma Barlas challenged and encouraged my development as a scholar and beyond by imploring me to interrogate not only what I know, but how I came to know it. Her unique pedagogy impacted the ways in which I conceive of the production of knowledge both in an academic setting and outside of it. Asma’s tutelage…