My main research interest is in the postcolonial Arab world. My first monograph focused particularly on gender representation in this context. I am currently writing a monograph entitled Postcolonial Times: Arab Literary and Theoretical Contexts and am in the final stages of co-editing a book called Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World, which grows out of a collaborative AHRC/ESRC-funded project. I am developing further interests on connections between Arab and South Asian women’s writing. I have supervisory and teaching interests in Arab and South Asian fiction and in postcolonial studies more broadly.
I would be particularly interested in supervising PG research in the following areas:
Arab fiction in English, French or translation from Arabic, especially projects on any of the following: gender; sexuality; nation; migration; transnational community.
South Asian and South Asian diaspora literatures in English;
Postcolonial women's writing;
Migrant, expatriate and travel writing.
On sabbatical Term 1, 2013-14.
ENGL 369 Twentieth-Century Indian Novel in English (Convenor); ENGL 308 Contemporary Literature.
I have also taught on: ENGL 201: Theory and Practice of Criticism; ENGL 302: Women's Writing; ENGL 352: African Literature; ENGL 304 American Literature from 1900; MA (CLS): Postcolonial Women's Writing
To date I've mostly worked on women's creative output from the Middle East, particularly the Arab world. I'm currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Postcolonial Times and the Arab World: Literary and Theoretical Contexts. My first book, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film (Routledge, 2008) is an interdisciplinary examination of a range of Arab women's postcolonial fiction, autobiography, film and other visual media. My chapter on Zineb Sedira in Contemporary Art in the Middle East, ed. Paul Sloman (London: Black Dog Press, 2009), was positively reviewed in the Guardian Review in October 2009 and I have published articles/chapters on other Arab women writers as well as on Iranian cinema.
I'm increasingly focused on South Asian (particularly Indian and Pakistani) and South Asian diaspora texts, and on connections between South Asia and the Arab world in women's writing. I will be publishing a chapter on these connections in eds. Claire Chambers and Caroline Herbert, Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora (Routledge, forthcoming).
I have wider interests in postcolonial and diaspora literatures. I edited a symposium on 'Glocal Diasporas' for the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2010) and a special issue of Postcolonial Text (2011) entitled 'Glocal Imaginaries'. I have also published on expatriate American writer Paul Bowles and his collaborations with Moroccan storytellers and writers.
I was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project 'Islamism in Arab Fiction and Film, 1947 to the Present' (with Dr Arthur Bradley and Dr Abir Hamdar), Feb. 2009 - Feb. 2010. Please see our website at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/islamism/index.htm. The major output of this project is a book, edited with Abir Hamdar (Durham), entitled Islamism and Arab Cultural Expression (Routledge, forthcoming 2014).
I am on the steering group of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and a co-organiser of Trans-Scriptions, a series that brings together creative writers, publishers and academics to discuss interfaces between 'Writing, Culture and Location'. Please see www.transculturalwriting.com
