The past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Virginia Center for the Humanities, and the Charles Warren Center for American History, Professor Zafar has published or edited three books: We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature, 1760-1870 (1997); New Essays on Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1996; co-edited with D. Garfield); and God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh (1992; co-edited with F.N. Boney and R.L. Hume). Her monograph, "Fictions of the Harlem Renaissance," appeared in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume VI (2002). Selections from her work in progress on food and American literary identity have appeared in different venues, including Early American Literature and Feminist Studies. In 2007 Zafar held the Walt Whitman Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Zafar is currently the English department's Director of Honors.