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 (2022/2023):

1:30-2:30, Monday afternoons 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 is forthcoming from Manchester University Press; 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.

Teaching (2022/2023):

During the Michaelmas Term, I will be convening the Level 3 Resistance in South Asian Postcolonial Literature seminar module as well as the Level 2 Postcolonial and World Literatures lecture module. I will also be lecturing on the Post-War Fiction and Poetry module. 

I will be on research leave in Epiphany 2023.

Authored book

• Mirza, M. (2016). Intimate Class Acts: Friendship and Desire in Indian and Pakistani Women's Fiction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Book review

• Mirza, Maryam (Published). ‘Precarious Beings and Impossible Dreams.’ Review of What Will You Give for This Beauty? by Ali Akbar Natiq.

Chapter in book

• Mirza, Maryam (2021). Diasporic Female Precarity and Agency in Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways. In Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World. Schmidt-Haberkamf, Barbara, Gymnich, Marion & Schneider, Klaus P. Brill. 215: 88-102.
• Mirza, M. (2017). The Individual and the Collective in Contemporary India: Manju Kapur’s Home and Custody. In Indian Literature and the World: Multilingualism, Translation and the Public Sphere. Ciocca, R. & Srivastava, N. Palgrave Macmillan. 245-262.
• Mirza, M. (2015). Intimacy across Caste and Class Boundaries in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. In Dalit Literatures in India. Misrahi-Barak, J. & Joshi, A. Routledge.
• Mirza,M. (2011). Female Space and its Discontents in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors. In Perceiving and Representing Space in the English-Speaking World. Omhovère,C. Presses universitaires de Nancy. 81-95.

Edited Journal

• Mirza, M., Herbillion, M & Belleflamme, V-A. (2017). Australia-South Asia: Contestations and Remonstrances. Special Issue. The Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia, 8 (2).

Journal Article

• Mirza,M. (2020). The Anxiety of Being Australian: Modernity, Consumerism and Identity politics in Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 55(2): 190-203.
• 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.
• Mirza, Maryam (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.
• Mirza, Maryam (2015). Men at Home, Men and Home in Two Anglophone Novels by Indian Women Writers. Gender, Place & Culture 23(7): 1061-1070.
• Mirza, M (2014). "An All-weather, All-terrain Fighter": Subaltern Resistance, Survival and Death in Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 50(2): 150-163.
• (2010). Female Relationships across Class Boundaries: A Study of Three Contemporary Novels by Women Writers from the Indian Sub-continent. The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Koshy,M. & Mirza, M. (Accepted). Reading, Writing and the Contours of Power: Mridula Koshy Speaks to Maryam Mirza.
• Ahmad, R. & Mirza, M. (2018). ‘Genres, Languages, Voices: Rukhsana Ahmad in Conversation with Maryam Mirza’.
• Pirbhai, M. & Mirza, M. (2018). ‘Remapping Canada: An Interview with Mariam Pirbhai’.