Literature as Politics

Asma Sayed holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta in Canada, and teaches in the areas of English, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies.  Her interdisciplinary research focusses on Canadian literature in the context of global multiculturalism. Her areas of expertise include ethnic minority writing in Canada with a particular focus on South Asian Canadian Literature, works of M. G. Vassanji and Anita Rau Badami, and Indian cinema. She has published extensively in the fields of literary studies, diaspora studies, film studies, and women’s and gender studies. She is the editor of Screening Motherhood in Contemporary World Cinema (2016), M. G. Vassanji: Essays on His Works (2014) and Writing Diaspora: Transnational Memories, Identities and Cultures (2014), and co-editor of World on a Maple Leaf: a Treasury of Canadian Multicultural Folktales (2011). In 2013 she co-organized an international conference titled The Transnational Imaginaries of M. G. Vassanji at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK.