Dr. Mariam Pirbhai

Associate Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator / PhD Director

Contact Information

Email: mpirbhai@wlu.ca
Phone: 519-884-0710 ext.2530

Office Location: 3-119 Woods Building
Office Hours: As posted on office door or by appointment

Academic Background

• Ph.D. University of Montreal 2004 

  (Recipient of Governor General's Gold Medal for Ph.D., University of Montreal)
  

• M.A. McGill University 1998

• B.A. Hons. Dalhousie University 1994
  

Major Grants:

SSHRC Standard Research Grant: 2010-2013

Research Interests:

Post-Colonial Literatures and Theory; Diaspora Studies; South Asian Literature; Caribbean Literature; immigrant identities and ethnic canons; feminist historiography; indenture histories; British imperial narratives; gender

Biography

Books:

- Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women's Literature. Co-editor with Joy Mahabir (New York: Routledge, 2012).

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415509671/


- Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture: The Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.  (Nominated for MLA Best First Book Award, 2009)

http://www.utppublishing.com/Mythologies-of-Migration-Vocabularies-of-Indenture-Novels- of-the-South-Asian-Diaspora-in-Africa-the-Caribbean-and-Asia-Pacific.html

Other Publications:

I have also published extensively, in articles and book chapters, on a range of British, Canadian, Caribbean and South Asian authors, including E.M. Forster, Jamaica Kincaid, Shani Mootoo and Salman Rushdie. My articles have appeared in peer-reviewed international journals such as Dalhousie Review, Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Journal of Postcolonial Writing

Current Research Projects:

At present I am working on two major projects:

- a study of “South Asian Canadian Fiction”

- a SSHRC-funded bilingual study of “Indo-Caribbean” authors: Cyril Dabydeen, David Dabydeen, Rabrindanath Maharaj, Shani Mootoo, Ernest Moutoussamy (francophone), Laure Moutoussamy (francophone), V.S. Naipaul, Lakshmi Persaud, Ryhaan Shah, and others

Graduate Supervision:

I have served as Advisor or reader on a variety of dissertation topics in Post-Colonial and Diaspora Studies, including Arab-American, Asian-American, South Asian and Indigenous Literatures.

Teaching:

I regularly teach the following undergraduate courses:

Reading Fiction, Post-Colonial Literature, South Asian Literature, Caribbean Literature: Cross-Cultural Encounters, Narratives of Empire

And the following graduate courses:

Re-Reading Post-Colonial Theory, Caribbean Women's Writing

Other:

Editorial Board - Postcolonial Text