Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Sadaf Jaffer

Associate Research Scholar

Sadaf Jaffer is an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer at Princeton University where she teaches courses on South Asian, Islamic, and Asian American Studies. She has published with the Star-Ledger, the Hill, the Journal of Women’s History, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Huffington Post, Altmuslimah, and American Kahani. She bolstered representation for women and minorities in politics as the first Asian American woman (with Ellen Park and Shama Haider) and the first Muslim American (with Shama Haider) to serve in the New Jersey Legislature. Prior to joining the NJ legislature, Jaffer served two terms as mayor of Montgomery Township. In January of 2019, she was the first South Asian American woman to serve as mayor in NJ and the first Muslim woman mayor of a municipality in the US.

Ben Baer

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University

Ben Baer is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. He has translated from Bengali an important work of mid twentieth-century Indian fiction by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Hansuli Banker Upakatha (The Tale of Hansuli Turn). He is the author of Indigenous Vanguards: Education, National Liberation, and the Limits of Modernism.

Smaran Dayal

Assistant Professor of Literature at Stevens Institute of Technology

Smaran Dayal is Assistant Professor of Literature at Stevens Institute of Technology, and serves on the Board of Directors of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently working on a manuscript titled Afrofutures, Atlantic Pasts: Decolonial Revisions in Black Science Fiction. His scholarly work has appeared in the journals American Studies, Interventions, and Citizenship Studies, among other venues.