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Monthly Archives: February 2011

British South Asian Cinema and the Presence of History

February 28th, 2011|

A couple of years ago, when I defended the proposal for my dissertation on British South Asian cinema, one of the questions that came up was, why British South Asian cinema? In a field where people often assume that your area of academic specialization will relate strongly to your own background in some very personal, but compelling way, those present at this defense understood my academic interests at two levels. They instinctively understood my interest in postcolonial cinema (I am, after all, an English-speaking South Asian), and in diasporic South Asian-American cinema (because here I am, a South Asian studying at an American university, living far, far away from her family and home).

Response to a reader's criticisms of "The Egyptian Revolution through a Literary Lens"

February 27th, 2011|

Response to a reader’s criticisms of “The Egyptian Revolution through a Literary Lens”

The reader is correct to a certain extent:  revolution involves hard political work, and reading novels does not make for revolution alone–and some postcolonial theory fails to address revolution in any meaningful way.  But I think the reader must have quickly perused my […]

Response to a reader’s criticisms of “The Egyptian Revolution through a Literary Lens”

February 27th, 2011|

Response to a reader’s criticisms of “The Egyptian Revolution through a Literary Lens”

The reader is correct to a certain extent:  revolution involves hard political work, and reading novels does not make for revolution alone–and some postcolonial theory fails to address revolution in any meaningful way.  But I think the reader must have quickly perused my […]

The Egyptian Revolution Through a Literary Lens

February 26th, 2011|

The Egyptian Revolution through a Literary Lens

This winter, as protests against Hosni Mubarak escalated in Tahrir Square, commentators from across the political spectrum began to construct analogies between the situation in Egypt and earlier flashpoints in history.   From the left, the Pakistani critic Tariq Ali suggested that “we witnessing…a wave of national-democratic […]

When I Wail for Haiti: Debriefing (Performing) a Black Atlantic Nightmare

February 13th, 2011|

We do not know or have never confronted Haiti’s pain. We have talked about it. Written about it incessantly. Some have actually engaged with it. Still we have never sat with it in its rawest form and let it be. It has always been smothered. Shhhhhh. Not in public and certainly not in mixed company.