SCHOLARSHIP

Books

(October 2025). Osman, W. & Crews, R. D. (Eds.) Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering imperial knowledge and power. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

(December 2020). Television and the Afghan culture wars: Brought to you by foreigners, warlords, and activists. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, Geopolitics of Information. (won the Activism, Communication, and Social Justice Outstanding Book Award of 2021 at the International Communication Association)

(Forthcoming). Crews, R. D & Osman, W. Afghanistan: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Articles

2024 - Osman, W. Unruly Subjects: The Subaltern Struggle for Media Justice, Multimodality, and Autoethnography in Academia and Beyond. Visual Anthropology Review.

2024 - Osman, W. & Bajoghli, N. Decolonizing transnational feminism: Lessons from the Afghan and Iranian Feminist uprisings of the twenty-first century.  Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 20(1), 1-22.

2022 - Building spectatorial solidarity against the “war on terror” media-military gaze. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 54(2), 369-375.

2021, May 26 - Osman, W., Zeweri, H., & Karzai, S. The fog of the Forever War with a laugh track: Afghan Americans on the United States of Al. Middle East Research and Information Project.

2019 - Between the White House and the Kremlin: A comparative analysis of Afghan and Tajik media. International Journal of Communication, 13, 619-641.

2019 - Racialized agents and villains of the security state: How African Americans are interpellated against Muslims and Muslim Americans. Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 5(1-2), 155-182.

2014 - On media, social movements, and uprisings: Lessons from Afghanistan, its neighbors, and beyond. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(4), 874-887.

  • Between the White House and the Kremlin: A Comparative Analysis of Afghan and Tajik Media

  • On Media, Social Movements, and Uprisings: Lessons from Afghanistan, Its Neighbors, and Beyond

  • The Fog of the Forever War with a Laugh Track in “United States of Al”

  • Building Spectatorial Solidarity against the “War on Terror” Media-Military Gaze

  • Decolonizing Transnational Feminism: Lessons from the Afghan and Iranian Feminist Uprisings of the Twenty-First Century Item

Chapters in Edited Volumes

2023 - Afghan television drama: Balancing entertainment with the realities of war. In C. Salamandra & N. Halabi, Middle Eastern television drama: Politics, aesthetics, practices. London, UK: Routledge.

2017 - Jamming the simulacrum: On drones, virtual reality, and real wars. In M. Fink & M. DeLaure (Eds.), Culture jamming: Activism and the art of cultural resistance (pp. 348-364). New York, NY: New York University Press. 

2019 - Media and imperialism in the global village: A case study of four Malalais. In A. Punathambekar & S. Mohan (Eds.), Global digital cultures: Perspectives from South Asia (pp. 280-300). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

2018 - Brought to you by foreigners, warlords, and local activists: TV and the Afghan culture wars. In M. N. Shahrani (Ed.), Modern Afghanistan: The impact of 40 years of war (pp. 149-176). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

2011 - “Trashy tastes” and permeable borders: Indian and Iranian soap operas on Afghan television. In D. I. Rios & M. Castañeda (Eds.), Soap operas and telenovelas in the digital age: Global industries and new audiences (pp. 237-256). New York, NY: Peter Lang Inc.

  • “Trashy tastes” and permeable borders: Indian and Iranian soap operas on Afghan television

  • Modern Afghanistan: The impact of 40 years of war

  • Jamming the simulacrum: On drones, virtual reality, and real wars.

  • Media and imperialism in the global village: A case study of four Malalais.

Book Reviews

Osman, W. (2024). Between agency and imperial subjectivity: A rereading of the Afghan Civil War [Review of The Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan by E. Leake]. The H-Diplo Network Book Review. 

Osman, W. (2021). Reframing the agents of the Islamic Republic. [Review of Iran reframed: Anxieties of power in the Islamic Republic by N. Bajoghli]. Society for Cultural Anthropology.

Academic Awards & Fellowships

Spring 2023 - Center for Experimental Ethnography Fellowship, UPenn

2021-2022 - Klein College Faculty Research Award

2020-2022 - Jack G. Shaheen Research Grant, New York University

2021 - ACSJ Outstanding Book Award, Activism, Communication, and Social Justice interest group, International Communication Association

2016-2017 - Visiting Scholar, Center for Media, Culture, and History, NYU

2014-2015 - Regional Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center, Theme: Color

2014-2015 - Faculty Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Temple University

2013-2014 - Postdoctoral Fellow, Social Science Research Council, Transregional Research: Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections

2012-2013 - Visiting Scholar, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Summer 2011 - Council for Media and Culture Summer Field Research Grant

2009-2010 - Social Science Research Council (SSRC), International Dissertation Research Fellowship; Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Turkey

Spring 2009 - Mainzer Fellowship in Gender Studies, University of Cambridge, UK

2008-2009
 - Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Tajikistan

Summer 2008
- Council for Media and Culture Summer Field Research Grant

2003-2004 - Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, New York University

Summer 2003 - Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, New York University