Masood Raja

Review: Time and the River

Published in 2007, Time and the River is by far the most intriguing and enlightening work by the Belizean author Zee Edgell, author of highly acclaimed novel Beka Lamb. In the literary circles of United States, the slave narrative is an established form o... Read >

On Academic Writing

Mostly informed by my own practices, these are my current thoughts about academic writing specific to humanities. I believe that the way we write is connected very much to what we want to accomplish by our writing. There are few simple ways of looking at ... Read >

The Rhetoric Of Democracy And War On Terror: The Case Of Pakistan

On November 3, 2007 General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan declared a state of emergency. What ensued in the preceding weeks on the national front was a total blockade of free speech, a complete reshuffling of Pakistani Supreme Court, and an absolute clamp ... Read >

Ihab Hassan: “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism”

(These are my notes on the second handout for my summer course on postmodernism. You can find the handout on the course website: http://postcolonial.net) This handout has been excerpted from Ihab Hassan's book The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern ... Read >

The Laughable Certitude of Foundational Intellectuals: The Case of Professor Christine Fair and the

In a recent TV interview, Professor Christine Fair, Georgetown University, made the following unfair (I can't resist the pun here) statement in response to another expert's views, contrary to hers, on the question of US drone attacks in Pakistan and their... Read >

Postmodernism: Introductory Notes

(These are my notes on the first handout for my summer 2010 course. See the handout entitled: "Postmodernism: An Introduction" on the course website: http://postcolonial.net). This handout has been excerpted from the Blackwell anthology entitled From M... Read >

Mikhail Bakhtin: Notes on “Epic and Novel”

For Mikhail Bakhtin, the novel as a genre is as "yet uncompleted" and "continues to develop" (3) and that is why it is hard to clearly explain its generic characteristics. Bakhtin's this essay/book chapter aims to provide a methodology of the novel in com... Read >