Mehr Afshan Farooqi
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. Allahabad University

I grew up in north India, in a household where poets and writers became part of the family. I was deeply influenced by my parents’ involvement in education, creative writing and publishing. Urdu poetry, especially of Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir, and Nasir Kazmi affected my world view as a young woman. This somehow made my encounter with modernity problematic and fascinating, and yet stirred me to connect with my inner self.

My specialization is in the literary cultures of South Asia, especially in the Urdu language, literary culture and history of north India. The cultural conditions of creating texts, as well as the textual production of cultural meaning, are important aspects of literary history. My research focuses on the intersection

For the past four years I was engaged in constructing an anthology of Urdu literature in translation, entitled The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature in two volumes, which I expect will be a major addition to teaching and research on Urdu literature in South Asia and in the West. It spans one hundred years of Urdu literature (1905 – 2005). It will widen the traditional limits within which anthologies are usually ordered, that is poetry, fiction and drama, to include auto/biographies, essays, humor and letters.

I have begun to publish my research on critical writing in Urdu, especially the movement towards jadidiyat or modernity. I have chosen to begin this work by introducing Muhammad Hasan Askari (d. 1978), Urdu’s eminent critic and creative writer – in fact a leading edge figure in the development of postcolonial discourse – whose work has yet to be fully understood due to the lack of adequate translation and analysis. His writings are an exploration into the meaning of cultural and literary translation, modernism, the use of ideology in literature, the expressive elements of language, and the theory of prose.

Current Projects

• The Development of Critical Writing as a Genre in Modern Urdu
• Reflecting on the Role of Translation in the Development of Urdu Prose Styles: A Critical Study of Muhammad H. Askari (1919 – 1978)
• From Colloquial to Learned to Literary: The Earliest Urdu Translations of the Quran and the Origins of Urdu Prose
• Literate Cultures, Social Spaces and Artistic Networks: Interflows Between Capital and Region in Eighteenth Century India

Select Publications

Books:

• The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature, Volume One: Poetry and Prose Miscellany, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007

• The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature, Volume Two: Fiction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007

• Crafting Traditions:Documenting Trades and Crafts in Early Nineteenth Century North India, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2004

Articles:

• “Changing Literary Patterns in Eighteenth Century North India: Quranic Translation and the Development of Urdu Prose,” in Francesca Orsini (ed.), title of volume TBA, New Delhi: Permanent Black, forthcoming, Spring, 2008
• “Towards A Prose of Ideas: An Introduction to the Critical Thought of Muhammad Hasan Askari,” in The Annual of Urdu Studies, No. 19, 2004, p. 175 – 190
• “The Secret of Letters: Chronograms in Urdu Literary Culture,” in Edebiyat, vol. 13.2, November, 2003, p. 147-158

Courses
My courses engage with classical as well as modern Indian literatures. I have taught courses focusing on South Asian women’s writing, diasporic literature, classical ghazal poetry, and literature of the Partition. I am planning to teach new courses about travel writing, literature of the oppressed classes (Dalits), and non-fiction writing from South Asia.