Areas of Interest/ Research

South Asian Writings in English, Refugee Narratives, Print Culture, Medical Humanities, British Poetry and Fiction, Literatures and Cultures of South Asian Muslims, Writings by Indian Muslim Women, Postcolonial Literature, Hindi/Urdu Literature

Statement

My primary areas of interest are colonial and postcolonial literature, with a focus on South Asia. I also have related interests in Refugee Studies and Medical Humanities. My earlier research on writings by Muslim Women authors in India culminated in two books (published by two leading academic publishers) and a few research articles. I translate from Urdu/Hindi to English and have translated a play, several short stories, and a few poems into English. My current book-length project on print culture investigates the interrelationship between print and modernity in late colonial India.

Appointments:

CWIT Visiting Fellow, King’s College, London, UK, 2022.

Visiting Fellow, Department of English, Potsdam University, Germany, 2019.

Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi (From 2014 -)

Taught at the Department of English, AMU, and School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GBU

Representative Publications:

Books/Journals:

The Silence That Speaks: Short Fiction by Indian Muslim Women, Oxford University Press (2022)  https://global-oup-com.eres.qnl.qa/academic/product/the-silence-that-speaks-9780190132613?subjectcode1=1793239%7CAHU00010&type=listing&facet_narrowbyprice_facet=50to100&lang=en&cc=jp#

Sultana’s Sisters: Gender, Genre, and Genealogy in South Asian Muslim Women’s Fiction, Routledge, London and New York, 2021 (co-edited) https://www.routledge.com/Sultanas-Sisters-Genre-Gender-and-Genealogy-in-South-Asian-Muslim/Qadeer-Arafath/p/book/9780367432508

Special Issue: Postcolonial World Literature, Thesis Eleven, SAGE, 2021 https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/thea/162/1  (coedited)

Medical Maladies: Stories on Disease and Cure from Indian Languages, Niyogi Books, 2022.  https://www.niyogibooksindia.com/books/medical-maladies

Journal Articles/Book Chapters:

Mahatma in Memescape: Making of Gandhi in Participatory Digital Culture, Gandhi in Literary and Cultural Imagination, Routledge, London and New York, 2022.  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003145479-7/mahatma-memescape-haris-qadeer

Routes, Roots, and Rihla: Cartography of Feminine Islam in Contemporary Anglophone Travel Narratives by Muslim Women from India, South Asian Review, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2022.2146940

The City and Beloved Witness: Mapping Cityscapes of Delhi in Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetry, The Journal of Commonwealth, SAGE, 2022. (First published online 2019) https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989419881025

“The Ground beneath Our Feet”: Miya Poetry and the Politics of Othering in Assam, Literatures From Northeast India: Beyond the Centre-Periphery Debate, Routledge, London and New York, 2022. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003272946-11/ground-beneath-feet-1-haris-qadeer?context=ubx&refId=d18de618-e101-466a-aa05-a6479a70478c 

Kurukshetra and Karbala: Mahabharata in Intizar Husain’s Fiction, Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature: Traversing Resistance, Margins and Extremism, Routledge, London and New York, 2021.  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003158424-4/kurukshetra-karbala-haris-qadeer?context=ubx&refId=23eff65e-e419-442f-8aea-9f9fd1f16779 

‘Urdu Translation of Alice in Wonderland, Alice in World of Wonders, (with Sumanyu Satpathy) Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Delaware in cooperation with the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 2015.

‘Voice from Veil: Some Perspectives on the Writings of Indian Muslim Women’, Studia-Philogia, Romania. 2011

‘Neither Internee nor Informer: Seamus Heaney- The Poet, The Public Spokesman, The Anthropologistin North’, Explorations, (Vol. 21, 2010) Lahore, Pakistan.

‘Returning to Revive, Digging to Define: Early Poetry of Seamus Heaney’ Exploration, Vol. 20, 2009, Lahore, Pakistan

Translation:

‘Blue-Winged Girls’ (English translation of Husn Tabbasum Nihan’s Hindi story ‘Neele Pankhon wali Ladkiya), The Silence That Speaks: Short Fiction by Indian Muslim Women, Oxford University Press, 2022.

‘That One’ (English translation of Balraj Menra’s Urdu short story ‘Woh’), Urdu Studies, guest-edited by Mehr A Farooqui, 2021.

‘Manzoor’, English translation of Sadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu story, Medical Maladies: Stories on Disease and Cure from Indian Languages, Niyogi Books, 2022.

‘Sultana ka Sapna’ – Hindi translation of Rokeya Hossain Sakhawat’s Sultana’s Dreams, Hans Hindi magazine (March 2020)

‘A Prostitute’s Letter: To Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah’- translation of Krishna Chandra’s Urdu short story ‘Ek Tawaif ka Khat: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru aur Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah ko’, in River of Flesh and other stories: The Prostituted Women in Indian Short Fiction, Speaking Tiger, India, 2016.

Translation of two Urdu poems by Zafar Ali Khan in The Glory of India: An Anthology of Urdu Poetry in English Translation, Viva Books, India, 2016.

‘Soil’- translation of Tarranum Riyaz’s Urdu short Story ‘Mitti’, in Pigeons on the Dome: Stories on Communalism/Secularism in India, Niyogi Books, India, 2015

‘The Curfew is Strict’ – translation of Anees Rafi’s Urdu short story ‘Curfew Sakht hai’, in New Urdu Writings, Westland Publishers, India, 2014.

Translation of the following short stories of Joginder Paul from Urdu to English: ‘Doves’ (Faaktain), ‘ ‘Natives’ (Bashindey), Free Spirit (Khulabaaz), ‘Kargil’, War, Jihad, etc… (Jung, Jihad, etc), and The House of God (Khane-e-Khuda) for a collection of short stories on the 1947 Partition, edited by Sukirta Paul (forthcoming)

Interviews: 

“Who is telling my story?”: In conversation with Shelina Jan Mohammed, Muslim Women: What Everyone Needs to Know, Viva Book, 2019.

“Muslim Women Fight Back”: In conversation with Miriam Cooke, Muslim Women: What Everyone Needs to Know, Viva Books, 2019.

An Interview with Professor Emeritus Sylvia Vatuk, Muslim Women: What Everyone Needs to Know, Viva Book, 2019

Other Publications:

Book review: Reimagining Nations and Rethinking Futures: Contemporary Eco-political Controversies in India and Australia, Thesis Eleven, SAGE  https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513620928819

Nissim Ezekiel, The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119076506.wbeps11

Afterlives of Mirza Ghalib, The Hindu, 27 December 2018.

Courses Taught

MA

Classical to Premodern

Poetry I (Ballad)

Fiction (Milan Kundera)

Research Methodology

Post-Independence Indian Literature

Poetry II (Performance/Slam Poetry and Narrative Poetry)

Postcolonial Literature and Theory

M Phil

Speaking Silence: Writings by Indian Muslim Women

Conference Presentations:

Mahatma and Memes: Ahimsa and Satyagrapha in Memescape, Gandhi in the Public and the Private Sphere: Image, Text, and Performance, Department of English, University of Delhi, 4-5 March 2020.

Mahatma in Memescape: (Un)Making of Gandhi in Participatory Digital Culture, 22-23 October 2019, National Conference on Gandhi in Literary Imagination, Organised by Department of English, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi

Border and Belongings: Poetics and Politics of Miyan Poetry in Assam (Plenary speaker), 20-21 August 2019, National Conference on Marginal literatures, organized by Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

“Where is the ground beneath our feet?”: Miyan Poetry and Politics of Othering in Assam, 5-6 May 2019, Conference on Literature from Northeast: Texts and Contexts, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, India

Alternative Retellings: Mahabharata and Indo-Muslim Cultures’ in International Conference on The Mahabharata and Inter-Asian Cultures, Department of English, University of Delhi, April 2017

‘In Search of Feminine Face of Islam: Secular Safarnamas by Indian Muslim Women’, UGC-DSA Conference on Intra-Asian Travel Writings, University of Delhi, March 2017

Rethinking Muslim Cosmopolitanism: The Idea of Ummah in Knights’ Taqwacores and JanMohammad’s Generation M’ Cosmopolitan Imagination and Genre Transactions, UGC-DAAD, University of Potsdam, Germany, and University of Delhi, December 2016.

Rebels on the Road: English Travel Narratives by Muslim Women, International Conference on Mapping Research on Muslim Women, JMI, New Delhi

Taleem, Tehzeeb, and Tarbiyat: Reading Children’s Literature in Urdu, Conference on Indian Vernaculars, University of Delhi, 2015

Revisiting Canterbury Tales: Adaptations and Appropriations, Conference on Revisiting Classics, Kashmir University, 2015

“‘Caught in the lanes of History’: Recollections of Delhi, Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetry” in National Conference of Agha Shahid Ali: Tradition and Modernity, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, March 2015

Oral Traditions and Muslim Folklore in North India: An Overview, International Conference on Reinventing Past through Folklore, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2014

Macaulay’s Children or Modernized Citizens: The Ambivalent Indian Attitude, National Conference, Rajasthan Association for Studies in English, JNU, Jaipur, 3-4 Nov. 2012

Marginalized at the Centre:  Writings of the Confessional Poets, National Conference on Writings from the Margins, Gautam Buddha University, 23-24 March, 12

Poetics of Human Dignity: The Unheard Voices from Guantanamo in International Conference on The Marginalized and Excluded in Society, Gautam Buddha University, 2012

Invited Talks/Discussions  

Mahatma in Memescape, Distinguish Lecture Series, School of Literature and Language, OP Jindal University, India, 16 Feb. 2022.

Invited Lecture, UGC-HRDC, Aligarh Muslim University, 21 Nov. 2020.

Stateless Bodies: Refugees and Visual Culture, National Conference on Hermeneutics of Body, Khalsa College, Patiala, Punjab, 30 October 2020.

The Poet and the City: Agha Shahid Ali’s Delhi, International Conference on Landscapes and Mindscapes: Place and Identity in Contemporary Literature, Govt. Degree College, Kashmir, 5-7 August 2020.

Urban Folk and Nontraditionality in Habib Tanvir’s Naya Theatre, 4 April 2019, Department of English, Sharda University, Greater Noida

Literary Cartographies: Delhi and its Imagination”, 5 June 2019, Potsdam University, Germany

Hybridity, Identity, and Islam: Understanding Ummah in Works of Contemporary Muslim Authors, 19 June 2019, Potsdam University, Germany

Invited Lectures on English Language and Soft Skills, National Institute of Technology, Haryana, 2018

Public talk on ‘Pleasures of Union in Separation: The Personal and Political in Ghalib’s Letters, 2018, Jindal Global University, India

Panelist, Tazkira-e-Tarjuma, Adab Urdu Literature Festival 2018, Oxford Bookstore, New Delhi

Panelist, Apeejay Language Festival – 2016, New Delhi

Panelist, Discussion on ‘Naiyer Masood’s Fiction’ Hindustan Awaaz,2015 Plenary Speaker, National Conference on Revisiting Classics in a Post Secular World, University of Kashmir, 2015

Plenary Speaker, National Conference organized by English Language Teaching Institute, Bikaner, Rajasthan, 2013