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 (2024/2025):

2 - 3 pm, Tuesdays 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.

Department Roles

2023 -                  Director of Postgraduate Research (Admissions and Funding)

2020 - 2023        Chair, International Committee

Teaching:

I am the module leader/convenor of an MA module entitled 'The Partition of India: Creative Responses' [not being offered in 2024/2025]. During the past five years, I also convened the Level 3 Special Topic module 'Resistance in South Asian Postcolonial Literature' [2019 - 2024] and co-convened the Level 2 'Postcolonial and World Literatures' lecture module. I  will be launching a new Level 3 module focusing on South Asian literature and film in October 2025.

I  lecture on the Introduction to the Novel, Post-War Fiction and Poetry, and Postcolonial and World Literatures modules and supervise UG and PG dissertations.

I will be on research leave in Epiphany 2025.

Authored book

• Mirza, M. (2023). Resistance and its Discontents in South Asian Women's Fiction. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526150622
• 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. (2017). ‘Precarious Beings and Impossible Dreams.’ Review of What Will You Give for This Beauty? by Ali Akbar Natiq. The Book Review, 41(10), 299

Chapter in book

• 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. (2021). Four interviews with South Asian diasporic writers: “I ground myself in multiple spaces”: Sehba Sarwar in Conversation with Maryam Mirza”, “Reading, Writing and the Contours of Power: Mridula Koshy Speaks to Maryam Mirza”, “Remapping Canada: An Interview with Mariam Pirbhai”, and “Genres, Languages, Voices: Rukhsana Ahmad in Conversation with Maryam Mirza”. In C. Lokuge, & C. Ringrose (Eds.), Creative Lives: Interviews with Contemporary South Asian Diaspora Writers. Columbia University Press
• Mirza, M. (2021). “Reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: A Personal Journey”. In Moving Arts: Essays on Art and Experience. The 87 Press
• 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
• Mirza, M. (2011). 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

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. Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities, 36, 11-18