Sadia Abbas
Sadia Abbas is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Studies at Rutgers University–Newark and director of the Center for European Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. She is the author of At Freedom’s Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament (2014), winner of the MLA Prize for a First Book, and the novel The Empty Room (2018), shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and co-editor (with Jan Howard of the RISD museum) of Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities (2021), which was listed as one the best art books of 2021 by The New York Times. She is co-founder and co-editor of Ideas and Futures, a multi-media, interdisciplinary e-journal of culture and politics and Executive Director of Ideas and Futures: A Collaborative for Just and Vibrant Societies.
Sadia grew up in Karachi and Singapore, lives in New York, and spends all the time she can in Lesbos, Greece, and Siena, Italy. She has written numerous essays on subjects including Jesuit poetics and Catholic martyrdom in Early Modern English poetry, neoliberalism and the Greek debt crisis, Pakistani art, the uses of Reformation in contemporary Muslim thought, and Jewish converts to Islam and treatments of subjectivity in contemporary theorizations of Muslim female agency. She has also written essays and opinion pieces for Dawn and Daily Times (the Pakistani dailies), Naya Daur, OpenDemocracy, CommonDreams and TANK magazine. She is currently completing, Space in Another Time: An Essay on Ruins, Monuments and the Management of Life about the connected afterlives of ruins and monuments in India, Greece, and the Americas and their role in the production and control of racial, religious, and ethnic identities.
Articles:
"Nikes in Nineveh: Daesh, the Ruin and the Global Logic of Eradication" The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East, eds. Anna Ball and Karim Mattar (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018): 293-308.
"Neither Greek nor Indian: Nation and History in River of Fire and The Mermaid Madonna," The Postcolonial Contemporary, eds. Gary Wilder and Jini Watson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018): 166-186.
"Preliminary Thoughts on Art and Society," Beyond Muslim Liberalism, eds. Faisal Devji and Zaheer Kazmi (London: Hurst Publishers, 2017): 243-260.
“The Echo-Chamber of Freedom: The Muslim Woman and the Pretext of Agency.” boundary 2 40:1 (2013): 155-189.
“Leila Aboulela, Religion, and the Challenge of the Novel,” Contemporary Literature 52:3 (2011): 430-461.
“Itineraries of Conversion: Judaic Paths to a Muslim Pakistan” Crisis and Beyond: Re-Evaluating Pakistan, ed. Naveeda Khan (London: Routledge, 2009): 345-369.
“Other People’s History: Contemporary Islam and Figures of Early Modern European Dissent,” Early Modern Culture, 2007. http://emc.eserver.org/1-6/abbas.html (permanently archived).
“Polemic and Paradox in Robert Southwell’s Lyric Poetry,” Criticism 45: 4 (2003): 453-482.
•Book Reviews:
"Of Things to Come," review of Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement, b2o, April, 2018, http://www.boundary2.org/2018/04/sadia-abbas-of-things-to-come-review-of-amitav-ghoshs-the-great-derangement/
"Angels of History: Review Essay of Faisal Devji's Muslim Zion," SCTIW Review, February 24, 2015,
Other publications:
“Go Where? Lesvos Summer 2018—A Personal Essay,” The Daily Times, Pakistan, Nov. 27, 2018.
"Lesvos Summer, 2018," Tank Magazine, UK, Nov. 2018. Online version:
“Imran Khan Continues Toxic Habits; where’s the Change?;” Naya Daur TV. Oct. 9, 2018,
Excerpt from The Empty Room, Scroll, India web, June, 2018.
Excerpt from The Empty Room, The Brooklyn Rail, web exclusive, May, 2018.
“Daring to Exist—The Pakistani Woman’s Fault,” Dawn June 6 ,1 2016,
“Bombs Targeting Christians is Extremism, but our everyday Bigotry Isn’t?” Dawn, April, ,1 2016,
“Valued Added” (a short essay on the paintings of Komail Aijazuddin for the gallery Catalogue for his exhibition Red and Gold --Khaas Art Gallery) Islamabad, 2013.
“The Roots of Pakistan’s Political Crisis: A Kleptocratic Military and Corrupt Political Elites,” Counterpunch, Nov. 12, 2007.
Scholarly books in progress:
Space in Another Time: An Essay on Ruins and Monuments
Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities, co-edited and co-produced with Jan Howard for the RISD museum.
Select interviews and reviews:
Scroll India review:
wordpress:
https://thehungryreader.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/the-empty-room-by-sadia-abbas/
Hindu Business line:
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/wedded-to-patriarchy/article24891283.ece
Newsline:
https://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/book-review-2/
Daily Times: Interview about academic and literary work:
The Friday Times interview about At Freedom's Limit;
Interview with the Rutgers Paper:
Select Talks:
The Empty Room Reading, Yale University, Nov. 1, 2018
“Pakistan and the Political Contemporary,” book launch panel for The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present, NYU Oct. 31, 2018.
The Empty Room Reading, Rutgers University Newark, Oct 25, 2018
Unmixing," Political Concepts Conference, CUNY, April 2018.
"Miniature and Baroque: Martial law, Global Militarism and the Reinvention of Form in Pakistani Art," CAA, February 2018.
Moderator and Organizer, "A Conversation with Shahzia Sikander," Rutgers University-Newark, April 2017.
Moderator and co-organizer, "Black Narratives of Living: a Conversation between R.A. Judy, John Keene and Fred Moten," NYU, December, 2016.
Presented to a faculty seminar on my book at the Oakley Center, Williams College, March 2016.
"Nikes in Nineveh: Daesh, the Ruin, and the Global Logic of Eradication," Civil War, Terrorism, and Political Violence, Conference at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, March, 2016.
"Apocalypse and the 24 Hour News Cycle: What Young People Have to Deal With Today," Keynote Speech, Michael Gershowitz Annual Conference on Media and Democratic Governance, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Newark, September 2015.
Radio Interviewee, speaking about the refugee situation in Greece with Prof. David Lloyd, SWANA Region Radio, July 20, 2015.
“On the Question of Metropolitan Solidarity,” University of Pittsburgh, April 2012.
“Antinomian Revival in the Muslim Novel,” invited talk, Haverford College, April 2011.
“Islamism and the Pakistani Praetorian State,” panel with Christian Parenti and Biju Matthew at Leftforum, NYC, March 2011.
“The Echo-Chamber of Freedom: The Muslim Woman and the Pretext of Agency,” invited talk, Center for Muslim Societies, Simon Fraser University, March 2011.
“The Idea of the West in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow,” Conference on Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, Hellenic Studies Progam, Simon Fraser University, March 2011.
“The Echo-Chamber of Freedom: The Muslim Woman and the Pretext of Agency,” Dept of Comparative Literature, UCLA, Jan. 2010.
“Thinking About Elsewhere,” Conference on Park 51, Rutgers-Newark, Nov. 2010.
“The Echo-Chamber of Freedom: The Muslim Woman and the Pretext of Agency,” Queer Cosmopolitanism panel at the ACLA, April 2010.
“A Few Cautions about the Turn to Religion,” Women and Religion Conference, Rutgers-Newark, March 2010.
Member of panel introducing “Re-Evaluating Pakistan” at Leftforum, Mar 2010.
Interviewed as a South Asianist in BHUTTO, a documentary, released 2010.
“The World is All We Have,” Response to Stathis Gourgouris at Columbia University Faculty Literary Theory Seminar, Feb. 2009.
“Religion in the Age of Identity: The Challenge of the Novel,” English Department, Williams College, Fall 2007.
“Bracketing Justice: Religion in the Age of Identity,” invited talk, Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY Buffalo, January 2007.
“Religion and the Task of Postcolonial Studies—Analysis or Critique,” Plenary session, Religion and Postcolonial Criticism Conference, Princeton University, March 2006.
“Theodicy, the Ethics of Unbelief and Criticism,” Religion and Postcolonial Criticism Conference, Princeton University, March 2006.