DEPARTMENT.FACULTY

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Dr. Muneer Aram Kuzhiyan
  • 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

    Teaching scheduleTeaching scheduleTeaching schedule

DEPARTMENT_STAFF.COMPLETE_CV

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 iD0000-0003-4065-4095

SCOPUS ID57795268900

Web of Science ResearcherIDGQB-5291-2022

Google Scholar ID4UFNOE4AAAAJ

Vidwan ID: 291657


  1. "Fragments against Ruins: The Waste Land, Adunis and the Modern Arab Imagination" (2022)

    Journal of Literature & Aesthetics (ISSN: 2278-523X), vol. 22, number 2, July-December 2022, pp. 5-17. 

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  2. "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-Vallejo 
    (2024, 
    Routledge).

     

  3. 'Toward a Vernacular Globalectics: “Minor” Illustrations from South India' (2022)

    South Asian Review, 2022 (Routledge), DOI: 10.1080/02759527.2022.2151771



  4. 'THE TWAIN SHALL EVER MEET: THE ARABIAN HANGING ODES AND TENNYSON’S “LOCKSLEY HALL”' (2023)
    Assonance: A Journal of Russian & Comparative Literary Studies, No.23, January 2023, ISSN 2394-7853 ©2023 Department of Russian & Comparative Literature, University of Calicut, pp. 89-101


  5. Devotional Contextures: the M?la Songs and Muslim Ethical Formation in Contemporary Kerala (2022)

    Contemporary South Asia (Routledge), DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2022.2086968

  6. "The Many Riches of Human Flourishing: On the Veiled Agent in Veil Narratives" (2014)

    Transnational Literature Volume 6, no. 2 May 2014, Flinders University, 
    South Australia

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  7. "mappila maulud: paathavum sandarbhavum" Mappila Maulud: Text and Context (2020)

    Thelitcham Monthly 22 (11). 2020. Chemmad, Malappuram: Darul Huda Islamic University, 20-25. 

    An abridged Malayalam rendition of  my article  “Poetics of Piety: Genre, Self-Fashioning, and the Mappila Lifescape.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26 (3). 2016. Cambridge University Press: 423–41. doi:10.1017/S1356186315000462.

    Translated by: Shakkir Pulliyil

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  8. "South Asian Devotional Music" (2014)

    Fitzpatrick, Coeli, and Adam Walker, eds. Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God [2 volumes]. 
    Santa Barbara, California: 
    ABC-CLIO, 2014. http://publisher.abc-clio.com/9781610691789

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  9. "Praise Poetry, Keralite Tradition" (2014)

    Fitzpatrick, Coeli, and Adam Walker, eds. Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God [2 volumes]. 
    Santa Barbara, California: 
    ABC-CLIO, 2014. http://publisher.abc-clio.com/9781610691789

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  10. "Mappila Art and Literature" (2014)

    Fitzpatrick, Coeli, and Adam Walker, eds. Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God [2 volumes]. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2014. http://publisher.abc-clio.com/9781610691789

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  11. 'Making “modernity” one’s own: A note on Sir Syed’s notion of jadidiyyat' (2017) Download PDF
  12. "Poisoned chalice? English at an Islamic university in Kerala" (2013)

    English Today (Cambridge University Press), 29, pp 15-18 doi:10.1017/S0266078413000266


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  13. "Poetics of Piety: Genre, Self-Fashioning, and the Mappila Lifescape" (2016)

    Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 
    (Cambridge University Press)
    Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 423 - 441 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186315000462

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LISTDownloadUPLOADED DATE
Globalectics
21/10/2021
CompLit in India
21/10/2021
World literature and Comp Lit
21/10/2021
Linguistics and Poetics
21/10/2021
Culture and Representation
21/10/2021
Cultural studies
21/10/2021
Modern Arabic Poetry: Time by Adonis
21/10/2021