Zain R. Mian

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I am a scholar of Comparative Literature who works on modern Urdu and Anglophone literary cultures. My research bridges the study of Urdu and World Literature.

My current project, Literary Capitals: Lahore, Delhi, and the World in Urdu, explores the relevance of material and conceptual geographies to the development of Urdu writing. I show how Lahore’s emergence as a literary capital challenged common sense understandings of Urdu as being the language of Delhi and the United Provinces. Lahori writers reimagined Urdu as a Punjabi, Indian, and World language by challenging the traditional authority of the native ahl-e zabān. Their debates reflect the constitutive interplay between geography, embodiment, and authority in Urdu literary culture. As writers across India debated the true markaz or center of Urdu literature, what was at stake was the very idea of Urdu itself: to whom it belonged, who could speak it, and who had the right to delimit its boundaries. Literary Capitals traces this history across magazines, radio broadcasts, and poetry gatherings while theorizing centrality as a relevant concept for the study of world literatures.

I am also currently working on an anthology of Urdu literary criticism in translation.

Research Interests:

 World Literature Studies; Literary Sociology; Modern Urdu Literature; Translation

Recent Publications:
 “Through the Lens of Urdu: Reading World Literature in Adabī dunyā.” Journal of World Literature 8 (2023): 235-258.

Public Writing:
“Willing Representatives: Mohsin Hamid and Pakistani Literature Abroad.” Herald Pakistan. January 2019.

“No Country for Yes Men.” Africa is a Country. July 2018.