Scholar to Speak at WSSU on World Literature and Minority Cultures
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Dr. Mohamad Asaduddin, professor of English,
Dean of Humanities and Languages, and Honorary Director of Academics at
Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University in New Delhi, India, will lecture on
“World Literature and Minority Cultures: Perspectives from India” at
Winston-Salem State University, October 1, at 12:30 p.m. in Room 207A
Thompson Center on the WSSU campus.
Free and open to the public, the lecture will engage with the current
discourses on world literature and examine how insights from Indian
experiences of multi-lingual literature can significantly intervene in the way
world literature is being conceived, promoted and consumed.
Author, critic and translator in several languages, Asadudddin writes on
literature, language politics and translation studies and also serves as the
director of the Jamia Centenary Project. He was Fulbright Scholar- inResidence at Rutgers University during 2008-2009 and a Charles Wallace
Trust Fellow at the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University
of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, in 2000. He has lectured and led workshops at
universities in South Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Among his books are: Filming Fiction: Tagore, Premchand and Ray, The
Penguin Book of Classic Urdu Stories, Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of
Ismat Chughtai, and Image and Representation: Stories of Muslim Lives in
India with Mushirul Hasan. He is the vice chair of the Indian Association for
Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. He is a regular speaker at
literary festivals on translated literature and translation studies, and has
received numerous prizes for his translation.
During his visit to WSSU from September 30 to October 8, Asaduddin will
also participate in a faculty workshop on Global Engagement through
Technology, a conversation on the Transformative and Global Role of
Minority Serving Institutions in India and the US, visits to several classes in
English, Management and Economics, as well as meetings with students,
faculty, and the administration to develop future collaborations with JMI.
WSSU is developing a partnership with JMI University in connection with
the National Endowment of the Humanities project “Integrating India into
the Liberal Arts.” In Spring, Asaduddin team-teaches a course on “World
Literature and Culture” via video conference with Dr. Rose Sackeyfio,
associate professor of English at WSSU, a project made possible by the UNC
- India Technology Learning Grant.
Jamia Milia Islamia is a minority serving institution founded to serve the
interests of India’s diverse religious groups and other minorities from a
secular perspective. As a comprehensive university, Jamia Millia offers
courses in arts, the humanities and social sciences, as well as management
and computer science among other fields.