For Educators
Saffron Dreams
Responding to the needs of educational institutions, we developed an academic edition of Saffron Dreams that includes an Instructor’s Manual containing discussion topics and questions for each chapter. This edition also contains a suggested reading list, glossary, and recipes of dishes mentioned in the novel.
Several academic institutions have adopted Saffron Dreams as a course study or recommended reading including University of California Los Angeles, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Indiana University, University of Georgia, Boston University, George Washington University, Toledo Ohio College, California State University, Georgia College, Owens Community College, Drake University, Loyola Marymount University, Holy Names University, Allegheny College, Ashland University, Springfield College, University of Virginia, and Bowling Green State University.
Request a Desk Copy
Educators with an academic mailing address can request a free desk copy via email to the publisher.
Dissertations and Papers
Saffron Dreams has also been used as a basis for several presentations and papers.
Changing Race Boundary Perception by Reading Narrative Fiction
Psychologist Dan Johnson and the research team from Washington and Lee University, Basic and Applied Social Psychology journal, 2014
The study shows that reading a snippet of Saffron Dreams produced two welcome results. Readers were more likely to categorize people as mixed-race, rather than forcing them into specific racial categories. They were also less likely to associate angry faces with disliked outsider groups. Read the remarkable findings at Pacific Standard and Bustle.
An Ambassador Role in Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
Paper presented by Hasnul Insani Djohar, 12th East-West Center International Graduate Student Conference on the Asia-Pacific Region, Imin International Conference Center Honolulu, Hawai‘i, February 2013
The topic of this paper is the relationship between Muslims and Americans, specifically the Muslim struggle to distance themselves from the stereotype of terrorism in the post-9/11 world as well as after the attacks on the US embassies in North Africa and the Middle East. Using a post-colonial framework and an approach informed by feminist studies, this paper analyzes Shaila Abdulla’s Saffron Dreams and its depictions of a Muslim-American woman and her role as a cultural translator between the “Orient” and the “Occident.”
Like “hair sneaking from beneath the scarf”: Contemporary immigrant Muslim women novelists speak of gender, immigration, and Islam
Dissertation by Sabiha Sorgun, Ph.D., Department of English, Northern Illinois University, 2011
This study analyzes four representative novels by contemporary immigrant women writers, namely, Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams , Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home , Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan , and Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarfin order to examine how these writers respond to conversations about and by Muslim women between the non-Muslim West and the Muslim Middle East.
Muslim Women and Immigration in Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
Presented by Nicholas Duron, College of Liberal and Fine Arts, University of Texas, San Antonio COLFA Spring Research Conference, March 2012
Other People’s Parts: Covering the Undesirable in Works by Nafisa Haji and Shaila Abdullah
Miriam Robinson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Performing South Asia at Home and Abroad, The 12th Annual South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Conference, January 2012
Ripening across Space and Time: Shaila Abdullah’s Saffon Dreams as an Anglophone Muslim Bildungsromane
Presented by Dr. Naglaa Hassan, Fayoum University Solving Social Issues Through Multicultural Experiences, NAAS 20th Anniversary Conference 2012, February 2012
Beyond the Veil: Evolving Muslim-American Identity in Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
Paper presented by Anjana Thampi, Full-time Research Scholar Research Centre and PG Department of English, FMN College, Kollam, October 2009