Emad Mirmotahari, Ph.D.
Assistant ProfessorMcAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
English
College Hall 628
Phone: 412.396.6420
mirmotaharie@duq.edu
Education:
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, 2008M.A., Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, 2005
M.A., History, California State University, Long Beach, 2002
B.A., History, University of California, Irvine, 1999
Mirmotahari's work engages African fiction, specifically its relationship to historical discourse and to religion. His work also addresses world literature as an idea and a practice. Secondarily, Mirmotahari is interested in Spanish-language Latin American fiction.
Mirmotahari teaches courses on African fiction, fiction from throughout the African diaspora, and modern and contemporary African-American fiction. He also teaches courses in world and postcolonial fiction.
"From Black Britain to Black Internationalism in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Pilgrims Way." English Studies in Africa 56.1 (2013): 17-27.
"Mapping Race: The Discourse of Blackness in Rudolph Fisher's Walls of Jericho." Journal of African-American Studies 16.3 (2012): 574-587.
"Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic in Africa's Other Diaspora." New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic: Definitions, Readings, Practices, Dialogues. Eds. Pilar Cuder and Benedicte Ledent. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012.
"History as Project and Source in Achebe's Things Fall Apart." Postcolonial Studies 14.4 (2011): 371-383.
Islam in the Eastern African Novel. London and New York: Palgrave, 2011.
Review of India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms, Ed. John C. Hawley. African Studies Quarterly 11.4 (Summer 2010). 140-141.
Review of The Beautfiul Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Megestu. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Volume 35, Issue 1, 2009.
Review of Amina by Mohammed Umar. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Volume 35, Issue 1, 2009.
"Estranged" Miraftabi, Morteza. Translated from the Persian. Translation: A Journal of Translation Studies. 2 (2007): 25-29.
Review of Africa, Football, and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism, and Resistance by Paul Darby. Ufahamu: Journal of African Studies, 33:2, 51-55, 2007.
-Comparative Immigrant Narratives.' Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research, Social Justice Group Meeting, January 2012, Pittsburgh, PA
-Under the Lens: Investigating Race in Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies.' American Literature Association/Mysterious America, September 2011, Savannah, Georgia.
--Men With Civilisations But Without Countries.'- African Literature Association, April 2011, Athens, Ohio.
-The Question of Secularity in the Sub-Saharan African Novel.' Religion and Spirituality in Society Conference, Chicago, Illinois, February 2011.
Conference Planning Committee, Panel Co-organiser & Chair (-Proud to Swim Home-: In Search of the Old in the New Orleans) and Presenter -En las sombras de la Nouvelle Orleans.' American Comparative Literature Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2010
-Translating Islam in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise.- Constellations: Comparative Literature and the New Humanities, Atlanta, Georgia, October 2009.
-The Anti-Arab Motif in the sub-Saharan African
Novel.' African Literature Association, Burlington, Vermont, April 2009.
Panel Organiser and Chair (African -Metatexts')
and Chair -Revising Revisions: Islam, Gender,
and the Discourse of History in Nuruddin
Farah's From a Crooked Rib.' African Literature
Association, Macomb, Illinois, April 2008.
-Independent Teaching and the Pedagogy of
Course Design.' UCLA Comparative Pedagogies
Forum: -Critical Reflections on a Neglected
Art,' Los Angeles, California, September 2007.
Panel Organiser and Chair, (Latin America, the -Other-Black Atlantic). American Comparative Literature Association, Puebla, Mexico, April 2007.
Co-Organiser and Chair (Soccer, Nationalism, and Globalization in Africa) UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center, Los Angeles, California, May 2006.
-The (Im)possibility of African Philosophy.' American Comparative Literature Association, Princeton, New Jersey, March 2006.
-Transatlanticism Reconsidered: Gilroy and Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea.- Southern Comparative Literature Association, Columbia, South Carolina, September 2004.
-Islam as Spectre in Hedayat's Blind Owl." American Comparative Literature Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 2004.
When Mirmotahari is not teaching, reading, or writing, he follows three football clubs: River Plate (Argentina), Ajax (Holland), and Barcelona.