Writings About Kashmir
Illuminating the Labyrinthine Region
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Book Description
Any attempt to homogenize Kashmiri society or the politico-cultural discourse on Kashmir is a dangerously flawed exercise. To that end, the chapters in this book address various aspects of the political, cultural, and socioeconomic life in Kashmir. These chapters are interdisciplinary interventions that could potentially bridge ethnic, religiocultural, and political divides in the region. The book is divided into three sections: the first section explores history and memory, offering a critical dialogue between these phenomena and fiction. The chapters in section two offer a critical dialogue between history, politics, and gender, analyzing historical and political discourses to underscore the agential capacities of Kashmiri women, which are, traditionally, subsumed within masculinist discourse. The sole chapter in section three foregrounds the complex relationship between history, trauma, and poetry.
Taken together, this book is a nuanced attempt at giving readers the opportunity to engage with multiple subjectivities, historical understandings, and political opinions. It will be of interest to general readers, scholars, and advanced students of Literature, Politics, History, Human Geography and Sociology.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the South Asian Review.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Nyla Ali Khan
Section 1: History, Memory, and Fiction: A Critical Dialogue
2. Mapping the Claims of History and Memory in Theorizing of the Kashmir Question
Sana Shah
3. Excrement and Waste: Examining the Ramifications of the Municipal Infrastructures and the Problem of Global Eco-Cosmopolitism in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir
Zachary Vincent Bordas
Section 2: History, Gender, and Politics: A Critical Dialogue
4. "Dancing Naked": Gender, Trauma and Politics in the Mystical Poetry of Lal Ded
Abir Bazaz
5. Women, Morality and Law: Prostitution in Kashmir
Sana Kochak
6. Women Negotiating Public Sphere in Conflict-Ridden Kashmir: A Case of Sacred-Sites
Zohra Batul
7. Freda Bedi Looking "From a Woman’s Window" on Kashmir
Andrew Whitehead
Section 3: History, Trauma, and Poetry: A Complex Relationship
8. Poets of Circumstances: Love, Trauma and Death in Digital Poetry
Veena Mani
Editor(s)
Biography
Nyla Ali Khan teaches at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), USA. She has also taught as Visiting Professor at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA. Formerly, she was Professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, USA. She received her PhD in English Literature and her Masters in Postcolonial Literature and Theory at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA. Dr Nyla Ali Khan is the author of several published articles, book reviews, and editorials. She has edited Parchment of Kashmir, a collection of essays on Jammu and Kashmir, written five books, including Educational Strategies for Youth Empowerment in Conflict Zones: Transforming, Not Transmitting, Trauma; The Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism; and Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between Indian and Pakistan. Several of her articles have appeared in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines in the United States and South Asia.