Contact Information

Biography

Dr. Emad Mirmotahari is an associate professor of English and has been at Duquesne since 2010. He is the department's internship coordinator, director of the World Literature Minor, as well as the faculty advisor to Duquesne's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honors society.

Education

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, 2008
M.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

Research Interests & Expertise

Mirmotahari's expertise is modern African fiction, fiction from throughout the African diaspora, postcolonial literature, and world literature. He is also interested in translation studies and theory.

 

School

Mirmotahari teaches courses in African fiction, fiction from throughout the African diaspora, Latin American fiction, and world and postcolonial literature. He teaches courses on narratives of exile, immigration, and displacement on a regular basis, as well as Honors College courses around various topics in social justice.
  • "A Portrait of White Progressivism: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah." Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Forthcoming in 2024.
  • "The Reading Self in Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears." Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 69, no. 3, 2023: pp. 517-538.
  • "Gurnah's Fiction at the 'End of Religion.'" PMLA, vol. 138, no. 2, 2023: pp. 368-373.
  • "Tabish Khair's How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position as an Academic Novel." American Book Review, vol. 43, no. 4, 2022: pp. 38-42.
  • “Secularism and the Postcolonial in Tabish Khair’s How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position.” College Literature, vol. 49, no.1, 2022: pp. 80-102.
  • "The Stray Dog," by Sadegh Hedayat. Translated from the Persian. METAMORPHOSES, Vol. 29, issue 1, Spring 2021: pps 119-126.
  • "Literary Methods and Community Engagement: The Case of Katherine Mansfield's ‘Garden Party.'" Reflections, vol 18, no 1, Spring/Summer 2018, pp. 132-157.
  • "Lafcadio Hearn's Chita and the Spanish-speaking Americas." Studies in the Novel, vol 50 no 2, 2018, pp. 213-232.
  • "Presuming Translation." Translation Review 96 (2016): 21-33.
  • "The Local as the Global: Reflections on Teaching World Literature." World Literature Today 90.3-4 (May-August 2016): 52-56.
  • " 'A Cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism': The African Novel and the Muslim Question in the National Age." Interventions. 17.1 (2015): 45-63.
  • "Harlemite, Detective, African?: The Many Selves of Rudolph Fisher's Conjure Man Dies." Callaloo 36.2 (Spring 2013): 268-278.
  • "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 Beautiful 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.
  • "Aftermaths of Babel." Religion and Spirituality in Society. Granada, Spain. April 2019.
  • "Modelling World Literature in Hearn's Chita." Society for Novel Studies. (The Novel For or Against World Literature). University of Pittsburgh. May 2016.
  • "Postcoloniality According to Samuel Selvon." EACLALS: Uncommonwealths, Riches, and Realities. Innsbruck, Austria. April 2014
  • 'Men With Civilizations But Without Countries.' African Literature Association. Athens, Ohio. April 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.