HARIS QADEER, Assistant Professor, PhD (AMU)

HARIS QADEER

Assistant Professor
Office: Room no. 44
Department of English
Arts Faculty, North Campus
Meeting Hours: By Appointment
Email: hqadeer@english.du.ac.in
PhD (Aligarh Muslim University)

Areas of Interest/ Research 

South Asian Literature, Print Culture, Medical Humanities, Indian Literature, Migration Studies, British Poetry and Fiction, and Literature and Islam, Anglophone literature from the Global South

Statement 

My primary areas of interest are colonial and postcolonial literature, with a particular focus on South Asia. I also have related interests in Migration Studies and Medical Humanities. My earlier research on writings by Muslim women authors in India resulted in two books published by leading academic publishers, as well as several research articles. I translate from Urdu and Hindi into English and have translated a play, several short stories, and a few poems. Currently, I am working on a book-length project that explores the interrelationship between print culture and modernity in late colonial India.

Appointments

Visiting Fellow, CoFutures, University of Oslo, Norway, 2024

Charles Wallace India Trust 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 the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GBU

Representative Publications

Books

The Silence That Speaks: Short Fiction by Indian Muslim Women, Oxford University Press (2022) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-silence-that-speaks-9780190132613 

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

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

Karbala: A Play by Premchand, Sahitya Akademi, 2023 (co-translated with Sami Rafiq). 

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

Journal Articles

Female Education and the Empire: Muslim Women’s Academic Migrations and Autobiographical Narratives, a/b: Autobiographical Studies, Routledge, 2025 (in Press), http://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2025.2560745 

Politicizing Shit: Everyday Spaces, Abject Bodies, and Disgust in Salma’s “Toilets.” South Asian Review, Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2025.2513127

Subalternity and everyday solidarity in contemporary Indian short stories, Contemporary South Asia, Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2024.2439894

Beyond His Last Trial: Reflections and Speculations on Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Aṣlī Jinn.” Urdu Studies, 2025.  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16751234 

Premchand, the playwright and the drama critic: Evaluating Hindi theatrescape in colonial India, Literature, Critique, and Empire Today, SAGE, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/30333962241267795

Routes, Roots, and Rihla: Cartography of Feminine Islam in Contemporary Anglophone Travel Narratives by Muslim Women from India, South Asian Review, Routledge, 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

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

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

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

Book Chapters

“Aim of Stage”: Progressive Politics and Poetics in Premchand’s Plays (forthcoming) 

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

“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.

Translation

‘What Happened on the Ship?’ (English translation of Anwar Qamar’s ‘Jahaz mei kya hua?’ (forthcoming)

‘Eidgah’ (English translation of Premchand’s ‘Eidgah’), Best Urdu Stories, Penguin, 2026 (forthcoming) 

‘Doves’ (English translation of Joginder Paul’s ‘Faaktein’), Rivers of Thirst: Stories of Partitions, Borders and Exile, Speaking Tigers, 2024. 

‘The Dwellers’ (English translation of Joginder Paul’s ‘Bashindey’), Rivers of Thirst: Stories of Partitions, Borders and Exile, Speaking Tigers, 2024. 

‘Free Spirit’ (English translation of Joginder Paul’s ‘Khulabaaz’), Rivers of Thirst: Stories of Partitions, Borders and Exile, Speaking Tigers, 2024. 

Three Short Stories (English Translation of Joginder Paul's three micro stories), Rivers of Thirst: Stories of Partitions, Borders and Exile, Speaking Tigers, 2024. 

‘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,’ English 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.

Interviews and other Publications:

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

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.

Research Supervision:

PhD 

Bidyut Sagar Borah: Reception of Russian Literature in Assamese (1930- 2000): Networks of                                      Appreciation, Translation and the Political Milieu (awarded in 2024).

Owais Farooq: Cartographing the City: Space and Place in Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetry (awarded in 2025)

Abdul Hameed P.A: Print Culture and Mappila Modernity: Arabimalayalam in Late Colonial India (completed)

Sayantani Chowdhury: A Material, Textual, and Literary Enquiry into Little Magazines as a Distinct Cultural Form in Twentieth-Century India (ongoing) 

Atul: Migranthood and City spaces: Representation of Minorites, Women, and Migrants in Urban Spaces of Indian Cinema (ongoing)

Vaibhav Nirapure: Caste Reconfigured: Reading Dalit Literature as a Critique of Indian Modernity (ongoing) 

Akshada Shrotryia: Longing to Belong: Time and Space in Postcolonial and Post-Partition Fiction

MPhil 

Varsha A: Visualising the Unseen: A Critical Exploration of Bipolar (Auto)Pathographics, (awarded in 2024).

Yashika Kant: Body, Self, and Surveillance during Epidemic in Colonial India, (awarded in 2023).

Krishitjeet Das: “Who is Watching the Watchman”: Authorship and Adaptation in Transmedia Storytelling, (awarded in 2022). 

Arita Basu: Reading Riddles: Implication of Translating Riddles in Satyajeet Ray’s Feluda (awarded in 2020).  

Abiral Kumar: Locating Chandrakanta: Early Hindi Fiction and the Myth of a Golden Age (awarded in 2019). 

Pratibha Kumari: The Afterimages of Partition: Representation of Police Action in Muslim Women’s Narratives from Hyderabad (awarded in 2017).

Priyanshi Khatana: Revisiting Latin America: Love, Politics, and Sexuality through Women’s Narratives (awarded in 2017). 

Bharat Chaudhary: The Damned Damsels: Identity, Culture and Society of Courtesans in Select Fictions (awarded in 2016). 

Mohammad Yasir: Dalit Autobiographies: Critical Insights (awarded in 2015).

Courses Taught

MA

Classical to Premodern, Poetry I (Ballad, Lyric, Elegy), 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/ Invited Talks:

Spectres of Superman: Desi Superheroes and Visual Storytelling in India, Comic Conclave, IIT Gandhinagar, 7th April, 2025 (plenary speaker). 

Documenting/Translating Lives: Academic Travels of Three Muslim Women in Late Colonial India, in the conference on Travel, Transposition, and Translation, organised by Jamia Milia Islamia and Sahitya Akademi, March 2025 (plenary speaker).

Print, Performance, and Paradoxical Modernity: Premchand and Hindi Drama in Colonial India, St. Stephen’s College, DU, 06th November 2024 (invited lecture)

Capes, Costumes, and Crusaders: Making of Superheroes in South Asia, CoFutures, University of Oslo, 11 July 2024 (plenary speaker). 

“Between Print and Performance: Premchand and Theatrical Modernity in Colonial India,” Zakir Hussain College, 11 October 2023 (plenary speaker). 

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

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

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.

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

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, organised 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

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

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

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

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

Panellist, 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

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

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

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

Marginalised 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 the International Conference on The Marginalised and Excluded in Society, Gautam Buddha University, 2012