Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Biographic Data
| ID | 758220 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fawzia Afzal-Khan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fawzia |
| FAMILY NAME | Afzal-Khan |
| SIGNATURE | AFZAL-KHAN F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Montclair State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9389-7432 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Be. Very. Careful. Who. You. Invite. In
This essay argues that the discursive violence Shahzia Sikander's artwork Havah incited on the pages of publications like the New York Times, cannot be seen as separate to the actual destruction of one of the two statues comprising the artwork. The essay further underscores that this violence has its roots in Christian eschatological extremist ways of viewing the world. As such, it is important to recognize the multicultural decolonial feminism t…
Lawrence in Lahore: The Lost Years
Lawrence in Lahore: The Lost Years invites us to read South Asian history through its complex imbrications with discourses of gender, race, sexuality and imperial politics, foregrounding their neo-colonial and imperial afterlives. In doing so, the play advances a progressive project of a radically queer aesthetic and ethical vision that gestures towards a future liberated from the constraints of a politically stagnant present. A femi-queer tragic…
Queer Performativities in Pakistan: A Postcolonial Femiqueer Reading of a Film and Two Drama Serials
The essay that follows is part of a larger queer genealogy project that aims to fashion “the theoretical organization and methodological perspective of genealogy” into a tool for understanding how the discursive practices and processes of state and religion (which hinge on conceptions of majority/minority) have turned notions of sexuality and sexual categories (heterosexual, gay, lesbian, transgender), as well as all other “minority” positionalit…
La Vie en Rouge
I met her through her writing, so powerful and impassioned a plea for truth and justice that I had not come across before. I was thrilled by the intimacy of her thoughts, marveling at her unflinching depiction of female oppression in a society dominated by corrupt men. She also powerfully delineated the subversive space inhabited by her heroines, such as Firdaus. Where had I seen those eyes before? How did I know that pain and passion? Why did th…
Roshan Ara Begum: Performing Classical Music, Gender, and Muslim Nationalism in Pakistan
The imbrication of issues of nation, class, gender, and religion necessitates a critical revision of the so-called secular postcolonial modernity embraced by Indian nationalists, including musicologists. The life and struggle of Roshan Ara Begum — Pakistan’s first and, to date, arguably greatest singer of classical music — is an instructive example of the complex intertwining of agency, resistance, and resignation in Muslim-identified Pakistan an…
Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhānd by Claire Pamment
Reviewed by: Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhānd by Claire Pamment Fawzia Afzal-Khan COMIC PERFORMANCE IN PAKISTAN: THE BHĀND. By Claire Pamment. Palgrave Studies in Comedy series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; pp. 230. Claire Pamment’s Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhānd is a lucid and important entry into the field of global performance studies. The bhānd method, as she defines it, is a comedic mode with a long genealogy …
The respectable courtesan: Malka Pukhraj, music and the postcolonial nation
Within the spirit of tracing continuities between an occluded past (Hindu-majority India) with the present-day nation of Muslim Pakistan, this article examines Malka Pukhraj’s memoir, Song Sung True (2003), which weaves a narrative of courtly and classical music and folklore traditions of early twentieth-century Indo-Pakistan in her performative work. As a classically trained female singer of India and Pakistan, Pukhraj enacts a tale of gender, c…
Notes for a Muslim American theatre historiography or a conclusion that is a beginning
Roundtable: Ayad Akhtar and the politics of representation and reception of Muslims on American stages
Commentary: The dramaturgy of political violence: Muslim Americans on American Stages – Princeton University, 3 April 2015
Expansions of the dramaturgy of political violence: Snapshots of three Muslim American playwrights
The politics of pity and the individual heroine syndrome: Mukhtaran Mai and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan
Using Lilie Chouliarki’s questions regarding the ethical responsibilities of spectators towards visual suffering in our mediatized age as a start-off point, wherein she states, ‘the mediation between spectator and sufferer is a crucial political space because the relationship between the two of them maps on to distinct geopolitical territories that reflect the global distribution of power’, this article looks at a recently staged operatic perform…
Feminist mediations: The sacred and the secular in the work of three Pakistani female singers
This article is situated within cultural, performance, political and feminist theory. It looks at the place of women singers in Pakistan and assesses their mediation of secular and sacred spaces, providing some understanding of the impact of women in Pakistani culture. A secondary aim of this article is to help dislodge some pervasive stereotypes in the West about the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, its culture and its women, while encouraging a se…
Sext of Saudade
Sext of Saudade, the precursor to Jihad Against Violence, is a collaboration between a Pakistani American woman and an Italian American woman. The play interrogates the contradictions and corroborations within a butch/femme dynamic informed by various identity markers including gender, sexuality, class, and race
Performative Interventions in the Body Politic of Pakistan
In light of the US-led “War on Terror” in which the Pakistani state has and continues to play a pivotal role as a frontline ally, this special section of TDR on Performing Pakistani Politics provides an urgent insight into the role of performance as artivist intervention for a citizenry confronting the tide of rising extremism as well as imperialism
Jihad Against Violence: A One-Act Play
Jihad Against Violence, a collaboration between two Pakistani American women, is a dramatic and poetic depiction of the struggle (emotional, physical, and psychological) against violence of any kind toward women in Pakistani culture
An Excerpt from Jihad Against Violence
Guest Editors' Column: Pakistani Creative Writing: Tracing the Tradition, Embracing the Emerging
(2010). Guest Editors' Column: Pakistani Creative Writing: Tracing the Tradition, Embracing the Emerging. South Asian Review: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 15-29
Lai-li-la-ah
Sam's Secret (an excerpt from Lahore With Love: (Growing Up With Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style )
(2010). Sam's Secret (an excerpt from Lahore With Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style) South Asian Review: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 100-105
What lies beneath: Dispatch from the front lines of the Burqa Brigade
As a Pakistani-born feminist academic living in the United States for almost 30 years, I am horrified, yet fascinated, by the phenomenon that has captivated the Pakistani public and press since the
Betwixt and Between? Women, the Nation and Islamization in Pakistan
This essay attempts to explore the question of Pakistani feminism's relationship with the tradition/modernity or secularism/Islamism debate, within the context of the discursive conditions of Islamization as they continue to unfold in response to national and international pressures. I argue that modernity, secularism and the west are not necessarily synonymous, and that new theorizations of Islamic modernity and a secular Islam are the need of t…
The American
No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women
Book Review| May 01 2005 No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women Shahla Haeri Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002 xxxiv +454 pp., $49.95 Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2005) 25 (1): 254–256. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-25-1-254 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Ma…
Scheherezade Goes West
Madmedea is an avatar of the fabled Scheherezade of the Arabian Nights, a response/challenge to Heiner Müller's texts, and more. “What could constitute an effective interruptive feminist performance to halt, reverse, and challenge the imperialist/patriarchal performances of globalized power and dominance in their postmodern capitalist permutations masquerading as a New World Order? In my performative identity as Muslim/South Asian/Other/Woman, ho…
Culture and Imperialism
Betwixt and Between? Women, the Nation and Islamization in Pakistan
This essay attempts to explore the question of Pakistani feminism's relationship with the tradition/modernity or secularism/Islamism debate, within the context of the discursive conditions of Islamization as they continue to unfold in response to national and international pressures. I argue that modernity, secularism and the west are not necessarily synonymous, and that new theorizations of Islamic modernity and a secular Islam are the need of t…
Queer Performativities in Pakistan: A Postcolonial Femiqueer Reading of a Film and Two Drama Serials
The essay that follows is part of a larger queer genealogy project that aims to fashion “the theoretical organization and methodological perspective of genealogy” into a tool for understanding how the discursive practices and processes of state and religion (which hinge on conceptions of majority/minority) have turned notions of sexuality and sexual categories (heterosexual, gay, lesbian, transgender), as well as all other “minority” positionalit…
Exposed by Pakistani Street Theater
Research Article| December 01 2001 Exposed by Pakistani Street Theater: THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE OF POSTMODERN CAPITALISM, PATRIARCHY, AND FUNDAMENTALISM Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2001) 19 (4 (69)): 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-19-4_69-67 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Fawzia Afzal-Khan; Exposed by Pakistani Street The…
Myth De-Bunked: Genre and Ideology in Rushdie's Midnight's Children & Shame”
Myth De-Bunked: Genre and Ideology in Rushdie's Midnight's Children & Shame”
Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel
Culture and Imperialism
Indian Sub‐Continent: Pakistan: Pakistani writing in English: 1947‐to the present: A survey
(1995). Indian Sub‐Continent: Pakistan: Pakistani writing in English: 1947‐to the present: A survey. Wasafiri: Vol. 10, No. 21, pp. 58-61
Street Theatre in Pakistani Punjab: The Case of Ajoka, Lok Rehas, and the Woman Question
The Parallel Movement, or Street Theatre as it is loosely called, in province of Punjab, Pakistan, emerged during repressive era of General Zia-ul-Haque's Martial Law regime (1979-1989).' This form of theatre raises several questions about nature of relationship between Pakistani Islamic state and society. The most pertinent of these for my project is question of state's coercive relationship with its female citizenry. Related to this is issue of…
Introducing a New Course: Muslim Women in Twentieth-Century Literature
A recent revision of requirements for the English major at Montclair State University has prompted many of us who teach there to design new courses that meet the new guidelines-in particular, those involving multinational study-or to revise existing courses so as to bring to the fore issues of gender, class, and ethnicity. In the new major there are no more required courses, only guidelines that have to be followed, so students can develop concen…
Postcolonial theatre anthropology
Amin, Shahid. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xiv + 256 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00 cloth, $15.00 paper. Arnoldi, Mary Jo. Playing With Time: Art and Performance in Central Mali. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. xx + 227 pp. including notes, glossary, appendix, bibliography, and index. $29.95 cloth. Gainor, J. Ellen, ed. Imperialism and Theatre:…
Exposed by Pakistani Street Theater
Research Article| December 01 2001 Exposed by Pakistani Street Theater: THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE OF POSTMODERN CAPITALISM, PATRIARCHY, AND FUNDAMENTALISM Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2001) 19 (4 (69)): 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-19-4_69-67 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Fawzia Afzal-Khan; Exposed by Pakistani Street The…
Where Are the Muslim Feminist Voices? A Question Asked in September 2001
March 01 2002 Where Are the Muslim Feminist Voices? A Question Asked in September 2001 Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Fawzia Afzal-Khan Online ISSN: 1531-4715 Print ISSN: 1054-2043 © 2002 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 TDR/The Drama Review (2002) 46 (1 (173)): 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1162/105420402753555813…
Here Are the Muslim Feminist Voices, Mr. Rushdie
Scheherezade Goes West
Madmedea is an avatar of the fabled Scheherezade of the Arabian Nights, a response/challenge to Heiner Müller's texts, and more. “What could constitute an effective interruptive feminist performance to halt, reverse, and challenge the imperialist/patriarchal performances of globalized power and dominance in their postmodern capitalist permutations masquerading as a New World Order? In my performative identity as Muslim/South Asian/Other/Woman, ho…
No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women
Book Review| May 01 2005 No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women Shahla Haeri Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002 xxxiv +454 pp., $49.95 Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2005) 25 (1): 254–256. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-25-1-254 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Ma…
The American
Betwixt and Between? Women, the Nation and Islamization in Pakistan
This essay attempts to explore the question of Pakistani feminism's relationship with the tradition/modernity or secularism/Islamism debate, within the context of the discursive conditions of Islamization as they continue to unfold in response to national and international pressures. I argue that modernity, secularism and the west are not necessarily synonymous, and that new theorizations of Islamic modernity and a secular Islam are the need of t…
What lies beneath: Dispatch from the front lines of the Burqa Brigade
As a Pakistani-born feminist academic living in the United States for almost 30 years, I am horrified, yet fascinated, by the phenomenon that has captivated the Pakistani public and press since the
Sext of Saudade
Sext of Saudade, the precursor to Jihad Against Violence, is a collaboration between a Pakistani American woman and an Italian American woman. The play interrogates the contradictions and corroborations within a butch/femme dynamic informed by various identity markers including gender, sexuality, class, and race
Performative Interventions in the Body Politic of Pakistan
In light of the US-led “War on Terror” in which the Pakistani state has and continues to play a pivotal role as a frontline ally, this special section of TDR on Performing Pakistani Politics provides an urgent insight into the role of performance as artivist intervention for a citizenry confronting the tide of rising extremism as well as imperialism
Jihad Against Violence: A One-Act Play
Jihad Against Violence, a collaboration between two Pakistani American women, is a dramatic and poetic depiction of the struggle (emotional, physical, and psychological) against violence of any kind toward women in Pakistani culture
An Excerpt from Jihad Against Violence
Guest Editors' Column: Pakistani Creative Writing: Tracing the Tradition, Embracing the Emerging
(2010). Guest Editors' Column: Pakistani Creative Writing: Tracing the Tradition, Embracing the Emerging. South Asian Review: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 15-29
Lai-li-la-ah
Sam's Secret (an excerpt from Lahore With Love: (Growing Up With Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style )
(2010). Sam's Secret (an excerpt from Lahore With Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style) South Asian Review: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 100-105
Feminist mediations: The sacred and the secular in the work of three Pakistani female singers
This article is situated within cultural, performance, political and feminist theory. It looks at the place of women singers in Pakistan and assesses their mediation of secular and sacred spaces, providing some understanding of the impact of women in Pakistani culture. A secondary aim of this article is to help dislodge some pervasive stereotypes in the West about the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, its culture and its women, while encouraging a se…
The politics of pity and the individual heroine syndrome: Mukhtaran Mai and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan
Using Lilie Chouliarki’s questions regarding the ethical responsibilities of spectators towards visual suffering in our mediatized age as a start-off point, wherein she states, ‘the mediation between spectator and sufferer is a crucial political space because the relationship between the two of them maps on to distinct geopolitical territories that reflect the global distribution of power’, this article looks at a recently staged operatic perform…
Notes for a Muslim American theatre historiography or a conclusion that is a beginning
History (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Art (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Literature (14 works) · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East (13 works) · History (11 works) · Politics (11 works)