DEPARTMENT.FACULTY
![photo](https://api.amu.ac.in/storage/images/empphoto/10059031-1647192585.jpg)
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.QUALIFICATION
MA, UGC JRF, MPhil, PhD
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.DESIGNATION
Assistant Professor
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.THRUST_AREA
Literary Formations in the Indian Ocean World (IOW), Anthropology of Literature, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Minority Studies, Critical Humanities
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.ADDRESS
504C, Tower C, Aligarh Greens, Aligarh Bypass Rd, Manjur Garhi, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh-202001
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.MOBILE
9411413613
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.EMAIL
akmuneer@gmail.com
- DEPARTMENT_STAFF.TIME_TABLE
My primary teaching/research interests lie at the intersection of comparative literature and cultural studies. The "interstitial" potentialities, prospects, tensions, and fault lines that animate regimes of discipline and habits of thought continue to fascinate me. I value the pursuit of a kind of critical humanities which is driven less by problem-solving/instrumental rationality than by the labour of understanding/critique: What if we conceive of the humanities as a labour of love which is not a "guarantee" but a "possibility," wherein the cultivation of "negative capability," for example, rather than of grand, conclusive and certain knowledge, is sought after and prized?
My PhD work explored devotional performance genres in the Mappila Muslim literary culture of the Malabar Coast in southwest India. I have long been intrigued by the relationship between religion and literature. One of the engaging questions, for me, has been the "co-production" of literature (broadly defined) and of selves, communities, cultures, lifeworlds, and so on. I also try to follow contemporary critical theory, minority studies, debates around tradition and modernity, and religion and the secular. I am also very interested in questions about the disciplinary formations of English studies in India.
For research advice and/or research collaboration, I welcome projects in comparative literary and cultural studies, especially the ones involving such languages and literary cultures as English, Arabic, Malayalam, and Urdu or Hindustani. The question of rendering legible the rich, diverse vernacular cultures of the Global South within the regnant disciplinary protocols of "Comparative Literature" and "World Literature" remains my larger research problem/agenda.
I am a recipient of the University Grants Commission Junior Research Fellowship (2012) and the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellowship at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley (2013-2014).
Courses Taught: Comparative Literature; Cultural Studies; Anglophone Arab Literature; Contemporary Critical Theory; Politics of English Studies; Philosophy of Literature; Linguistic Turn in the Humanities; World Literature; Modern Classics.
Research Project:
Minor Research Project funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), 2022-23
Project Title: "Women and the Tradition of Arabi Malayalam Song-Poetry: A Study of Texts and Contexts"
Budget Approved: Rs. 4,72,000/-
Project Duration: 12 months; Year of Award: 2023
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4065-4095
SCOPUS ID: 57795268900
Web of Science ResearcherID: GQB-5291-2022
Google Scholar ID: 4UFNOE4AAAAJ
Vidwan ID: 291657
- "Fragments against Ruins: The Waste Land, Adunis and the Modern Arab Imagination" (2022) Download PDFJournal of Literature & Aesthetics (ISSN: 2278-523X), vol. 22, number 2, July-December 2022, pp. 5-17.
- "Amphibious Poetics on the Malabar Coast: Kappapp???u and the Chronotope of the Ship in Mappila Literary Culture" (2024) Chapter 22,The Routledge Companion to Literature and the Global South
Edited by Alfred J. López and Ricardo Quintana-VallejoRoutledge).(2024,