Rate My Professor Nasia Anam

Nasia Anam is an assistant professor of English and Global Anglophone Literature in the Literature faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she joined in 2018. Prior to her appointment at UNR, she taught at Princeton University and Williams College. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles (2016), an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2007), and an A.B. in English Literature from the University of Chicago (2004). Anam serves as the 2022-2024 Joe Crowley Distinguished Professor of the Humanities. Her teaching portfolio in the Department of English includes courses on Literatures of Migration and Exile; Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Globalization; Orientalism; Representations of Asia in Western Media; Global Cities in Literature and Film; Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism; and contributions to the Core Humanities program's Modern World sequence. Specific courses taught encompass ENG 303, ENG 437/637, ENG 480A/680A, ENG 480B/680B, ENG 783, ENG 786, and ENG 788.

Anam's research centers on migration and mobility in literature, particularly portrayals of displaced populations that are minoritized, racialized, and excised, exploring what it means to inhabit uprootedness and exile permanently. She employs interdisciplinary methods from Postcolonial Studies, Ethnic Studies, South Asian studies, North African studies, Islamic studies, Geography, and Urban Studies, with a comparative approach across Anglophone, Francophone, and Bangla-language literatures. Her current book project, Muslim Heterotopias: Colonial Logics of Space in Literatures of Migration, examines spatial configurations like enclaves, peripheries, checkpoints, encampments, and dystopias in British, French, and American literature from post-WWII to post-9/11 eras, featuring works by Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Driss Chraibi, Leila Sebbar, and Michel Houellebecq. A second project investigates Bengali labor representations from colonial to postcolonial figures such as the Babu, lascar, and garment worker. She is editing a volume on post-9/11 Muslim perspectives in literature, film, performance, and visual art. Key publications include “Loose Canons: The Global Anglophone Novel and the Failures of Universalism” (Interventions, 2022), “Encampment as Colonization: Theorizing the Representation of Refugee Spaces” (Journal of Narrative Theory, 2020), “The Migrant as Colonist: Dystopia and Apocalypse in the Literature of Mass Migration” (ASAP/Journal, 2018), “The Immigrant Enclave and The Satanic Verses: Race and Religion in Purgatory” (Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 2016), “Introduction: Forms of the Global Anglophone” (Post45 Contemporaries, 2019), and “The Migrant’s Nervous Condition” (Post45 Contemporaries, 2017).