Associate Professor, Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department

240 Lake Ontario Hall
1 Campus Drive
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401
Phones: (616) 331-8172 (W), 405-385-1241 (H)
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Website: https://gvsu.academia.edu/AzfarHussain

COURSES

• LIB 201: Diversity in the United States
• LIB 310: Creativity
• LIB 311: Meaning
• Lib 312: Dialogue
• LIB 400: Visionary Thinker: Antonio Gramsci

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

The Wor(l)d in Question: Essays in Political Economy and Cultural Politics. Dhaka: Samhati Publications, 2008. [The book—a sustained interdisciplinary and theoretical undertaking—examines the “overlapping” logics of capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, as they variously inform and inflect our material and discursive practices (including literary and cultural productions) in today’s world, while offering a “counterpoetics of reading and resistance” through bringing together a number of relatively ignored literary texts from both the West and the non-Western world—from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.]

The Politics of Postcolonial Subjects, Sites, and Scenes: Micronarratives and Other Essays. Dhaka: Samhati Publications, 2009 [in press]. [The book—in its several experimental, mixed-genre, interdisciplinary pieces—theorizes how the orientalist optic enables, sanctions, and legitimizes the production of the postcolonial other and vice versa, while re-reading a number of ethnic and indigenous literary and cultural productions from the “third world” so as to fashion a multiethnic hermeneutic of resistance.]

Reading About the World, Volume 1. 3rd Edition. Co-edited with Brians et al. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. [This reader—meant for undergraduate General Education/Humanities courses—is an anthology of a wide variety of historical and literary writings from ancient and medieval times.] 

Reading About the World, Volume 2. 3rd Edition. Co-edited with Brians et al. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. [An anthology of a wide variety of contemporary historical and literary writings meant for General Education/Humanities courses.]

 

ESSAYS/ARTICLES IN PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS/ANTHOLOGIES

(in English & Bengali; titles in Bengali are given in English translation)

“Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis: A ‘Postcolonial’ Political Economy of the Body, Land, Labor, and Language.” Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies 15. 2 (2000): 27-61. (Reprint: Poetry for Students, v.32. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2010).

“Regimes of Visual Colonialism: Rereading National Geographic.” Panini: NSU Studies in Language & Literature4 (2007): 15-55.

“Towards a Political Economy of Racism and Colonialism: Re-reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.” In Race and the Foundations of Knowledge: Cultural Amnesia in the Academy. Illinois: University of Illinois Press,2006.127-144.

“Arab Nationalism(s).”  In A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English.  Eds. Prem Kumar Poddar and D.W. Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 340-344.

“Amilcar Cabral.” In A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English. Eds. Prem Poddar and David Johnson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

 “Dirty Dialectics and Onions: Theory and Practice against Late Monopoly Capital.” Panini: NSU Studies in Language & Literature 2 (2004): 73-136.

 “U.S. Imperialism: Some Perspectives from Latin America, South Asia, and the Arab World.” Meghbarta (an international journal of theory and activism) 5.3 (2004): 31-81. Available at .

“Rereading Lalon Fakir: The Anticolonial Politics of Peasant Songs.” Solicited by Padma, a South Asian journal of literature and culture.

“Serajul Islam Choudhury and His Oppositional Work of Cultural Politics.” Politics and Culture: Essays in Honour of Serajul Islam Choudhury. Dhaka: Department of English, 2002: 3-29.

“Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis: A ‘Postcolonial’ Political Economy of the Body, Land, Labor, and Language.” Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies 15. 2 (2000): 27-61.

“Reading Nazrul’s Vidrohi: The Politics of Its Language.” In Nazrul: An Evaluation. Ed. Mohammad Nurul Huda. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 1997. 287-296.

“Milton’s Paradise Lost: A Postcolonial Reading.” Harvest: Studies in Language and Literature 14 (1997-1998):15-42.

“Bibhutibhushan Bandyapaddhay: A Postcolonial Reading” (in Bengali). Trinamul 1.2 (1995): 34-58.

“Madhusudan: A Poststructuralist Reading” (in Bengali). Uttaradhikar: the Journal of Bangla Academy 21.3 (1993): 1-25.

“Om, Four Poems: A Free Reading” (in Bengali). Pranta 2.5 (1993): 45-75.

“A Reading of Sukumar Roy” (in Bengali). Swatantra 1.1 (1993): 1-15.

“Reactions against the Newtonian Clock and the Gutenberg Print: A Reading of Jiménez.” The Jahangirnagar Review 4 (1990): 1-40.

 

PRESENTATIONS/INVITED LECTURES/KEYNOTE SPEECHES (selected)

“Toward a Political Economy of Rhetoric in the Era of Capitalism’s Crisis.” Paper accepted for presentation, the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Minneapolis, May 2010.

“Language as a Site of Colonial Oppression and Anti-colonial Opposition.” Keynote Speech (to be delivered) for the International Language Week, Centre for South Asian Studies and South Asian Studies Students’ Association, the University of Toronto, Canada, February 2010.

“Orientalism Has Gotten Your Mama!: The Cultural Politics of World Literature.” Invited Public Lecture, World Literature Center, Dhaka, December 2008.

“The Late Imperial Logic of Capitalism: The Spectral and the Material.” Paper presented at the International Conference on “Democracy, the ‘New World Order’ and English Studies,” East West University, Dhaka, December 2008.

“Rereading Césaire and Ngugi: Postcolonial Theory in the Era of Late Colonialism.” Invited Paper Presentation, International Conference on African Literature, Department of English, Dhaka University, Dhaka, October 2008. 

“Race, Orientalism, and Postcolonialism.” Invited Lecture, Department of English, Bangladesh University of Business and Technology, Dhaka, March 2008. 

“Re-Orienting Orientalist Historiography: Whither the Subaltern?” Keynote Speech, Narayanganj Alliance of Cultural Activists, Narayanganj, November 2007. 

“Semiotics Today.” Invited Lecture, Department of Linguistics, Dhaka University, Dhaka, April 2007.

“The Politics of Magic Realism: Rereading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.”Invited Lecture, the English Department Lecture Series, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, April 2007.

“Marxism and Literature.” Invited Lecture, the English Department Lecture Series, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, April 2007.

“Rereading Lalon in Our Time.” Invited Lecture, organized by Lekhok Sangha (Young Writers’ Association), Dhaka University, Dhaka, March 2007.

“Whither Postcolonial Theory?” Invited Lecture, organized by the Alakayan Literary Center and the Department of English, Rajshahi University, March 2007.

“Politics and Media in the Middle East.” Invited Lecture, organized by the Departments of International Relations, Economics, and Journalism, Dhaka University, Dhaka, December 2006. 

“National Liberation and Postcolonial Theory.” Invited Lecture, Sanskriti Bikash Kendra (an activist cultural organization), Dhaka, October 2006. 

“The Politics of Post-al Theory.” Invited Lecture, Samhati Publications, Dhaka, August 2006.

“Protest Poetry from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Invited Lecture, Bangladesh University of Business and Technology (BUBT), the Department of English Symposium, Dhaka, July 2006.

“Chicano/a Literature: Language and Resistance.” Talk given in collaboration with Colette Morrow, Department of English, North South University, Dhaka, July 2006.

“Theoria, like Vodka, Can Do Crazy Things: Whither Metropolitan Theory?” Invited Lecture, the Department of English Lecture Series, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, June 2006. 

“Political Economy and Cultural Studies in the Era of Hamburger Fetishism.” Paper presented at the Brown Bag Series, Department of Ethnic Studies, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, February 2006.  

“Rereading Modern Arabic Poetry: Mahmud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani in the Post-September 11 World.”Paper presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, October 2005.

“Capitalism Kills: How Natural is the Tsunami Disaster?” Invited panel presentation,      American Studies Colloquium, Washington State University, April 2005.

“It Ain’t Just Tele-techno-electro-mediatic Logos or Lexis: U.S. Imperialism and the Rhetoric of Political Economy.” Paper presented at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association (PNASA) Conference, Portland, Oregon, April 2005.

“Towards a Political Economy of El Movimiento: From Che to Chavez.” Paper presented at NACCS [National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies] Pacific Northwest Regional Mini-Conference, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, October 2004.

“The ‘Postcolonial’ (?): Orientalism and Southernism” (co-presented with Victor Villanueva), American Studies Colloquium, Washington State University, October 2004.

“Che Guevara in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond T-Shirt Semiotics and Coffeeshop Dialectics,” the Semana de la Raza 2004 Lecture, sponsored by Chicano/a and Latino/a Students Alliance, Washington State University, March 2004. 

“Coming to Grips with Ethnic, National, and Religious Violence: Literature as a Site of Gnosis and Praxis.”Invited Keynote Speech, Fishtrap (an organization of writers), Enterprise, Oregon, February 2004.

“Coffee, Coke, Columbus, and Colonialism: Literary Theory and Comparative Literature in the Era of Hamburger Fetishism.” Paper presented as part of the English Department Colloquium Series, Washington State University, February 2004. 

“Politics in the Arab World: Conflicts between Israel and Palestine.” Invited Special Talk, Peace for Palestine Film Festival and Symposium, organized by Palouse Peace Coalition, Muslim Students Association, and Ecovista, Pullman, Washington, February 2004. 

 “When You Rub These Words, They Catch Fire: Contemporary Latin American Poetry.” Invited Edward Said Memorial Public Lecture, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2003. Sponsored by the Office of the Dean, College of Arts and Letters; the Department of English; the Humanities Program; Asian Studies, and ISRE at Old Dominion University.

“It Ain’t Your Lit Crit Shit but the Political Economy, Stupid!: Beyond the Postmodern/Postcolonial Politburo.” Invited Edward Said Memorial Lecture, Postcolonial Studies Group, Department of English, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2003.

“Tricontinentalism on the World Stage: Re-reading Mao, Che, Cabral, and Umar in the Era of Tele-techno-electro-mediatic Capital.” Paper presented at Rethinking Marxism’s Fifth International Gala Conference, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, November 2003.

“Rereading Spivak’s A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a Marxist-Feminist Theory of Voice.” Paper presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference, Missoula, Montana, October 2003.

“What’s ‘New’ About US Imperialism?: Perspectives from Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East.”Invited lecture for the American Studies Colloquium, Washington State University, October 2003. 

“When Caliban Reads His Bible: Logos, Land, and Liberation.” Invited Keynote Lecture for the lecture series “Title in the Text: Biblical Hermeneutics, Colonial and Postcolonial Preoccupations,” organized by Green College, Vancouver School of Theology, and the University of British Columbia, Canada, November 2002 (could not attend due to circumstances beyond my control). 

“A Labor Theory of History.” Invited Lecture, Pullman High School, Pullman, Washington, October 2002.

“Third-world Poetry, Politics, and Protests.” Invited Lecture,Pullman High School, September 2002.

“Towards a Race Theory of Value: Cross-reading Du Bois, Fanon and Marx.” Paper presented at the “Problem of Race” Conference, W. E. B. Du Bois Graduate Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 2002.

“Gioconda Belli: Fashioning a Feminist Geopoetics of Political Economy in the Latin American Context.”Paper presented at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Pacific Northwest Foco Conference, Washington State University, April 2002.

“Dialectics, Dialogics, Deconstruction: The Political Economy of Negation and Affirmation in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead and Audre Lorde's Zami: A Biomythography.” Paper presented at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association Conference on “Affirmative Action,” Spokane, Washington, April 2002

“The Political Economy of Racism and Colonialism: Re-reading Césaire, Fanon, and Memmi.” Paper presented at the “Race in the Humanities” Conference, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Wisconsin, November 2001.

“Towards a Political Economy of Racism and Colonialism.” Paper presented at the English Department Colloquium, Washington State University, November 2001.

“Theses on the History of US Neocolonialism and the Middle East.” Paper presented at the History Department Colloquium, Washington State University, November 2001.

“Is Goethe's Ghost Tagore's Host?: Towards a Postcolonial Poetics of Comparative Criticism.” Paper accepted for presentation at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, October 2001.

“American Studies and Political Economy: Theory and Method.” Paper presented at the American Studies Colloquium, Washington State University, September 2001.

“The Globalization of Space and the Spatialization of the Globe: A Political Economy of the Postcolonial Environment.” Paper presented at the 2001/72nd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, April 2001.

“The Point Is to (Ex)change It: Towards a Marxian-Postcolonial Political Economy of Land, Labor, Language, and the Body.” Paper presented at the international gala conference on “Marxism 2000,” organized by Rethinking Marxism, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, October 2000.

“Deconstructing the Mathematics and Metaphorics of Time and the Law of Value: Towards a Political Economy of Postcolonial Temporality.” Paper accepted for presentation at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, New Orleans, November 2000. 

“Semiotic Sandwiching and Epistemological Slow Poisoning: The Political Economy of Hamburger Fetishism and Postmodern American Fiction.” Paper presented at the 2000 RMMLA Conference , Boise, Idaho, October 2000.

“The Political Economy of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Political Economy.” Paper presented at the 2000 Western States Composition Conference, the University of Utah, October 2000.

“The Haunting Specters of Political Economy: Whither American Studies?” Paper presented at the 2000 Pacific Northwest American Studies Association (PNASA) Conference, University of Idaho, April 2000.

“Are We Being Historical Yet? Are We Being Theoretical Yet?” Special Panel Presentation at the American Studies Colloquium, Washington State University, April 2000.

“The Subaltern Can/not Speak: Reading Lalon’s Marginalia in the South Asian Scripts of Poetics, Politics, and Praxis.” Paper presented at the joint meeting of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies and the Historical Society for 20th-century China, Southwest Texas University, October 1999. 

Invited to chair a session at the “1999 Conference on John Milton,” Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, October 1999. 

“Reading Caliban’s Scribbles on the Margin: Reading a Postcolonial Political Economy of Surplus Value in the Stories of Mahasweta Devi.” Paper presented at the 26th English Conference called “Remembered Lives,” University of Wyoming, Summer 1999.

“Black Mask, White Skin: Absences and Appropriations of Race in the Academy.” Panel Presenter, the English Graduate Students Organization (EGO) Colloquium, Department of English, Washington State University, February 1998. 

“Marx’s Body, Marx’s Ghost: Foucault’s Microphysics and Derrida’s Spectropoetics.” Paper presented at the international gala conference on “Languages and Politics of Contemporary Marxism,” organized by Rethinking Marxism, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, December 1996.

“Media and Cultural Pluralism: Group Leader’s Report.” Presented at the West Coast Fulbright Conference on “Cultural Pluralism in a Democratic Society” organized by the International Institute of Education (IIE), San Francisco, April 1996.

“‘Money, like vodka, can do crazy things’: Chaucer’s Credit Card and Cash Connections in the Tale of a Hundred Francs.” Paper presented at the English Graduate Students Organization (EGO) Colloquium, Department of English, Washington State University, April 1996.

“Is Hamlet Still Writing His Radical Manifesto?” Paper presented at the English Graduate Students Organization (EGO) Colloquium, Department of English, Washington State University, February 1996.

“Nazrul Islam: His Poetics and Politics of Postcoloniality.” Paper presented at the International Students Colloquium, Center for English Language and Orientation Programs, Boston University, August 1995.

“Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought: Progress versus Fundamentalism in Bangladesh.” A special lecture organized by the Jahangirnagar University Branch of Bangladesh Lekhok Shibir (Bangladesh Writers’ Association), Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 1995.

“Bibhutibhushan Bandyapaddhay: A Postcolonial Reading” (in Bengali). Paper presented at the conference on “Bibhutibhushan: His Work and His World,” the Department of Bengali, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 1995.

“Poetry and the Media: The Violence of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Violence” (in Bengali). Paper presented at the National Poetry Festival Conference on Bengali Poetry organized by the National Poetry Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 1995.

“Lalon Fakir: The Politics of Secular Mysticism.” A special lecture organized by the Bangladesh Lekhok Shibir (Bangladesh Writers’ Association), Dhaka, Bangladesh, October 1994.

“Madhusudan Dutta: A Poststructuralist Reading.” Paper presented at the Madhusudan death-anniversary discussion forum organized by the Bangla Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 1994.

“The Dissenting Discourses in the US: Chomsky’s Deterring Democracy and Said’s Culture and Imperialism.” Paper presented at the Eleventh American Civilization Course, the American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad, India, January 1994.

“Tagore’s Eco-spiritualism” (in Bengali). Paper presented at the national conference on Rabindranath Tagore, the Bangla Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 1993.

“Tagore’s Gitanjali: A Postcolonial Reading” (in Bengali). Invited Speech for the Ekushey National Book Festival Lecture Series on Contemporary Bengali Literature, the Bangla Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 1993.

“Why is Marx Our Contemporary?” (in Bengali). Keynote Speech at the national conference on Karl Marx, the National Socialism Forum, Dhaka, Bangladesh, May 1992.

“Gramsci and His Theory of Language” (in Bengali). Paper presented at the national conference on “Gramsci in Bangladesh,” the Center for Advanced Research in the Humanities, Dhaka University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 1992.

 

SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM ATTENDED

“Culture and Materialism: A Symposium,” organized by the School of Critical Theory at the University of California-Davis, California, April 1999, with the leading theorists of the world such as Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, J. Hillis Miller, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, Michael Sprinker, Mark Poster, and others. Attended this high-powered symposium and interacted with the theorists mentioned on issues of power, praxis, politics, and cultural studies.

 

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

“Anti-colonial Poetics, Politics, and Praxis: An Exclusive Interview with Azfar Hussain,” conducted by Naushad Ali Hussein, The New Age, Literati, Dhaka (August 06, 2006).

 

MAGAZINE ESSAYS/EXPERIMENTAL PIECES

“Democratization, Decolonization, and the Dialectics of Culture” The New Age, Dhaka (Sixth Anniversary Special Issue, September 2009).

“Beyond the Current Dis/order of Things?” The New Age, Dhaka (Fifth Anniversary Special Issue, November 2008).

“The Politics of Culture, the Culture of Politics.” The New Age, Dhaka (Fourth Anniversary Special Issue, November 2007).

“Poetics and Politics of Jokes and Laughter. The New Age, Dhaka (Eid Special Issue, October 2007).

“Ancient Bangla Literature: Some Issues.” The New Age, Dhaka (April 27, 2007).

“Of Disparities and Discrepancies.” The New Age, Dhaka (April 20, 2007).

“Revisiting ‘Tricontinentalism’: Some Issues.” The New Age, Dhaka (April 13, 2007).

“Of Cultures, Conversations, and Colonialisms.” The New Age, Dhaka (March 30, 2007). 

“It Ain’t Just Multiculturalism, But Racism, Stupid!.” The New Age, Dhaka (March 23, 2007). 

“Power and Resistance: Sites, Scenes, Signs, and Subjects.” The New Age, Dhaka (March 9, 2007). 

“Events in the Rhythms of History.” The New Age, Dhaka (March 2, 2007). 

“Theses on Language: The World, Word, and Work.” The New Age, Dhaka (February 16, 2007). 

“The Language Movement of 1952: Power Relations and Language Relations.” The New Age, Dhaka (February 9, 2007). 

“On Reading James Nicolopulos’s The Poetics of Empire.” The New Age, Dhaka (February 2, 2007). 

“The Poetics of Finance: Money, Metaphors, Mathematics, and Markets.” The New Age, Dhaka (January 26, 2007). 

"Of Words and Works and Worlds." The New Age, Dhaka (December 29, 2006). 

"Dirty Theses from the Streets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Imperialism Again." The New Age, Dhaka (December 22, 2006). 

“Tribute to Begum Roquiah.” The New Age, Dhaka (December 8, 2006). 

“How Flexible is ‘Monsieur le Capital’?” The New Age, Dhaka (December 1, 2006). 

“We Say No to Bayonets, Bullets, and Bombs: Three Rally Poems.” The New Age, Dhaka (November 24, 2006). 

“Contemporary Poems by Palestinian Women.” The New Age, Dhaka (November 10, 2006). 

“‘Dem accuse me of assault on de Oxford dictionary’: Talking B(l)ack in Caribbean Poetry.” The New Age, Dhaka (October 20, 2006). 

“Theses on Place.” The New Age (Eid Special Issue), Dhaka (October 15, 2006). 

“Dhaka and Dirty Dialectics: A Prose Poem in Seven Microcantos.” The New Age (Eid Special Issue), Dhaka (October 15, 2006).

“Money and Language: Transaction, Translation, and Tension.” The New Age, Dhaka (October 13, 2006). 

“El Fisgon’s Political Cartoons and Visual Activism: History and Humor.” The New Age, Dhaka (September 22, 2006). 

“Meeting Slavoj Zizek: Coffee, Chocolate, Coke, and Colonialism.” The New Age, Dhaka (September 15, 2006). 

“Contemporary Latin American Poetry: When You Rub Those Words, They Catch Fire.” The New Age, Dhaka (September 1, 2006).