Staff profile

Academic Bio

I am Associate Professor of South Asian Literature. I received my PhD from Aix-Marseille University in 2012 and joined Durham University in September 2018. I have held an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Bonn as well as a BeIPD-COFUND Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Liege. I was also the recipient of a Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust Visiting Fellowship which was held at Newcastle University. I have taught at several universities and colleges in Pakistan, including Kinnaird College for Women and the National College of Arts, Lahore.

Office Hour (2023/2024):

11 am -12 noon, Fridays via Zoom.

Please email for an appointment.

Office:

ER 266, Elvet Riverside 2

Telephone: +44 (0) 1913344335

Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of South Asian postcolonial literature, gender studies, sociology, political philosophy and economics.

My second monograph entitled Resistance and Its Discontents in South Asian Women's Fiction was published by Manchester University Press in August 2023; it explores the theme of resistance through the lens of Anglophone fiction by contemporary writers such as Arundhati Roy, Kamila Shamsie, Manju Kapur, Tahmima Anam, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Meena Kandasamy.

Alongside Dr Stuti Khanna (IIT Delhi), I am currently working on a book entitled South Asian Literature: Twenty-First Century Perspectives (under contract with Routledge UK). This book aims to brings anglophone writings from India and Pakistan in sustained conversation with contemporary works in the Hindi and Urdu languages.

Teaching (2023/2024):

I am convening the Level 3 'Resistance in South Asian Postcolonial Literature' module and 'The Partition of India: Creative Responses' MA module in 2023/2024.

I also lecture on the Introduction to the Novel, Post-war Fiction and Poetry, and Postcolonial and World Literatures modules.

Authored book

• Mirza, M. (2016). Intimate Class Acts: Friendship and Desire in Indian and Pakistani Women's Fiction. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof%3Aoso/9780199466740.001.0001

Book review

• Mirza, M. (2018). ‘Precarious Beings and Impossible Dreams.’ Review of What Will You Give for This Beauty? by Ali Akbar Natiq

Chapter in book

• Mirza, M. Female Space and its Discontents in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors. In C. Omhovère (Ed.), Perceiving and Representing Space in the English-Speaking World (81-95). Presses universitaires de Nancy
• Mirza, M. (2022). Diasporic Female Precarity and Agency in Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways. In B. Schmidt-Haberkamf, M. Gymnich, & K. P. Schneider (Eds.), Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World (88-102). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466395_007
• Mirza, M. (2017). The Individual and the Collective in Contemporary India: Manju Kapur’s Home and Custody. In R. Ciocca, & N. Srivastava (Eds.), Indian Literature and the World: Multilingualism, Translation and the Public Sphere (245-262). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54550-3
• Mirza, M. (2015). Intimacy across Caste and Class Boundaries in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. In J. Misrahi-Barak, & A. Joshi (Eds.), Dalit Literatures in India. Routledge

Journal Article

• Mirza, M. (2020). The Anxiety of Being Australian: Modernity, Consumerism and Identity politics in Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 55(2), 190-203. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989418755541
• Mirza, M. (2019). Serving in the Indian diaspora: The transnational domestic servant in contemporary women’s fiction. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 55(1), 108-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2018.1424646
• Mirza, M. (2017). Ambiguous Pakistani-Muslim Masculinities in the Diaspora: A Study of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. South Asian Diaspora, 9(2), 193-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2017.1297356
• Mirza, M. (2015). "An All-weather, All-terrain Fighter": Subaltern Resistance, Survival and Death in Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 50(2), 150-163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989414537287
• Mirza, M. (2015). Men at Home, Men and Home in Two Anglophone Novels by Indian Women Writers. Gender, Place and Culture, 23(7), 1061-1070. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2015.1090409
• Mirza, M. (2010). Female Relationships across Class Boundaries: A Study of Three Contemporary Novels by Women Writers from the Indian Sub-continent

Monograph

• Mirza, M. (2023). Resistance and its Discontents in South Asian Women's Fiction. Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526150622

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Pirbhai, M., & Mirza, M. ‘Remapping Canada: An Interview with Mariam Pirbhai’. [[Media unknown]]
• Ahmad, R., & Mirza, M. (in press). ‘Genres, Languages, Voices: Rukhsana Ahmad in Conversation with Maryam Mirza’. [[Media unknown]]
• Koshy, M., & Mirza, M. (in press). Reading, Writing and the Contours of Power: Mridula Koshy Speaks to Maryam Mirza. [[Media unknown]]