Research
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. My research areas are race and ethnicity, decolonial theory, social movements, movement and mobility, and nationalism. Currently, I have two research projects. In my first research project, I study the construction, preservation, and transformation of whiteness, as a racial category, in the United States. For instance, I explore the role of different state institutions, such as immigration and citizenship laws and the US census, in racialization processes and in interaction with colonialism and global geopolitics. In my second research project, I study homelessness and urban design in Memphis, Tennessee. This study draws on theories of movement and mobility. These theories explain how and why specific mobilities have been historically promoted and facilitated, while certain other ones have been confined, policed, and at times, revoked. Through these inquiries, theories of movement and mobility examine how individuals and categories of people navigate through borders and boundaries and how these navigations are impacted by categorical social assignments, such as gender, race, religion, class, age, nationality, and ability.
Publications
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2025. “US Census, the MENA Campaign, and Classification Struggles.” Critical Sociology 51(6): 1313-1332.
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2023. “State of Exception, necropolitics, and Puerto Rico: Naturalizing Disaster and Naturalizing Difference.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 35(1):75-89.
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2021. “Accruing Whiteness: Power and Resistance in Prerequisite Citizenship Cases of Immigrants from the Middle East.” Citizenship Studies 25(5):620-635.
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2019. “A Home to which I Don’t Belong: Global Geopolitics, Neocolonialism, and the Experience of Middle Eastern and North African Citizens in the United States.” Postcolonial Studies 22 (4):506-522.
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2019. “The Inferior White: Politics and Practices of Racialization of People from the Middle East in the US.” Ethnicities 19(1):117–135.
Khoshneviss, Hadi and Robert Benford. 2018. “Social Movements.” In Sage’s Handbook of Political Sociology, edited by Stephen Turner and William Outhwaite, 828-844. London: Sage Publications.
Khoshneviss, Hadi. 2017. “Accountability in a State of Liminality: Iranian Students’ Experiences in American Airports.” Mobilities 12(3):311–23.&Բ;
Teaching Awards
2019 Distinguished Teaching Award, Department of Sociology, University of South Florida
2018 American Sociological Association's Sage Teaching Award from the Section on Teaching and Learning
2018 Distinguished Award for Teaching Excellence, Department of Sociology, University of South Florida
2017 Distinguished Teaching Award, Department of Sociology, University of South Florida
