EMAD MIRMOTAHARI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Office: College Hall 628
Telephone: 412.396.6414
Email: mirmotaharie@duq.edu
Office Hours Spring 2012:
Tuesday/Thursday 2:00-3:20 pm
EDUCATION
B.A., History, University of California, Irvine
MA in Intellectual History, California State University, Long Beach
MA in Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles
Dr. Mirmotahari is primarily interested in the sub-Saharan African novel, its genealogy, its “commitments,” and its development. His work explores how the African novel interacts with history as an idea and a discipline. His current book Islam and the Eastern African Novel addresses how the centrality of Islam in the fiction of Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M. G. Vassanji, renews conversations about nation, diaspora, and the form of the novel itself in an African context.
Mirmotahari is also interested in translation and translation studies, the literatures of the African diaspora (Caribbean, Black Britain, African-American), Anglophone postcolonial literatures, and the Spanish-American novel.
In his free time he follows the fortunes of three football teams: River Plate (Argentina), Barcelona, and Ajax AFC (Holland).
RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
"Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic in Africa’s Other Diaspora.” New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic: Definitions, Readings, Practices, Dialogues. Eds. Pilar Cuder and Benedicte Ledent. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012
"History as Project and Source in Achebe's Things Fall Apart." Postcolonial Studies 14.4 (2011): 371-383.
Islam in the Eastern African Novel. Palgrave, 2011.
Review of India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms, Ed. John C. Hawley. African Studies Quarterly 11.4 (Summer 2010). 140-141
Review of The Beautfiul Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Megestu. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Volume 35, Issue 1, 2009.
Review of Amina by Mohammed Umar. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Volume 35, Issue 1, 2009.
"Estranged" Miraftabi, Morteza. Translated from the Persian. Translation: A Journal of Translation Studies. 2 (2007): 25-29.
Review of Africa, Football, and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism, and Resistance by Paul Darby. Ufahamu: Journal of African Studies, 33:2, 51-55, 2007.
