I am a dual PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and South Asia Studies. In my ongoing dissertation, I study the transformation in the conception of poetry and aesthetics in the last two centuries, as literary historiography and practice are reorganized along linguistic lines. I do this specifically via a study of the substantial corpus of critical-theoretical and literary-historical literature on Hindi poetry from the late 19th to the mid-20th C. in North India. The transition from 'conventional' to lyric/modern poetry in the textualized high poetic traditions of the so-called Old World is a productive site for comparison across geographical regions. I am interested in similar processes -- the transformation of poetic practices, the reorganization of literary historiography, and the standardization of languages -- in modern South Asia, in particular, but also in Asia and Europe more generally.
I am also writing the first critical biography of Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927-2020), one of Hindi’s foremost modernist writers; the biography will be in Hindi and be published in the Raza Pustak Mala as part of its Biographies of the Masters series. I translate regularly -- at present, I am translating book-length interviews conducted by Udayan Vajpeyi with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (Upanyāskār kā Safarnāmā [A Novelist's Odyssey]) and Krishna Baldev Vaid (Pravās aur Pravās [Exile and Exile]).
Research Interests
19th and 20th C. literature (especially in Hindi, English), The afterlives of European modernism, Translation, Vernacular aesthetic theory, Literary historiography, Intellectual history.
Selected Publications
2023. "The Möbius strip of literature and criticism: Josipovici's Moo Pak (1994)." in Prasanta Chakravarty, ed. Assured Self, Restive Self: Encounters with Crisis. Delhi: Bloomsbury.
Translations
Premchand, Munshi. "A Trip to the Hills." The Complete Short Stories, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2017)
Premchand, Munshi. "Nitpicker." The Complete Short Stories, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2017)
Premchand, Munshi. "The Corpse of a Marriage." The Complete Short Stories, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2017)
Courses Taught
Instructor
SAST0001-401/HIST0850-401 Introduction to Modern India