Amardeep Singh's Best Literature Blog Posts
This page is a short list of what I consider to be my best literary blog posts.
These writings might be thought of as a kind of general interest literary criticism that might supplement my conventional
publication record. The writing is aimed at a lay readership with an interest in literature, as well as colleagues in other "fields" within literature.
One of my main goals in writing and posting them is to share information with a "public," or readers beyond the gates of the university.
Needless to say, the writing style one uses in a blog post is less formal than the kind
of writing one uses for academic journals. Blog posts are also admittedly less
likely to "endure" the way a well-written and researched work of formal literary
criticism might. But the posts below are written with care, and
they have sometimes had a surprisingly broad audience. Some posts rank
highly on Google searches for their subjects, which means I continue to get visitors
looking for comments on Azar Nafisi or Philip Roth long after my post on the
author in question is gone from the "front page" of the blog. My posts on "Teaching
Katherine Mansfield" and "Early Bengali Science Fiction" have been linked to
by Inside Higher Ed, and my comments on the Turkish writer Orhan
Pamuk were cited in a major daily Turkish newspaper. The blog has also been linked to twice by Slate.com.
Particularly with South Asian literature, I'm interested in sharing my knowledge
and entering into discussions with people for whom this literature is not at
all a marginal or obscure academic pursuit. Many readers will have grown up reading writers like Ajeet Cour or Sukumar Ray, often
in the original languages. Blog posts dealing with their works can thus facilitate a unique kind
of exchange: I benefit by gaining "insider" details and reference points that
might not otherwise be easy to learn from conventional research methods. Meanwhile, my readers may appreciate the chance to see topics covered that are rarely addressed in other media and print venues.
Some of my posts refer to teaching experiences. When I write these types of
posts, I limit myself to my own impressions of what it's like to teach a particular
author. I never criticize my students, and I generally try to keep in mind what
they would say if they came across my blog posts. Interestingly, these posts
might have some potential pedagogical benefit for others: I have heard back
from colleagues at other universities who have used my posts in preparing to
teach some of the texts I've referred to.
I don't refer very extensively to literary theory in my blog posts, partly because
I want my writing to be accessible to a lay audience, and the idiom of theory
seems better suited for formal publication. However, at times I have engaged
with theoretical issues that have been on my mind. Links to some of my more speculative
and theoretical posts come at the end of the list below.
Mostly Contemporary British, American, and World Literature
China Miéville's
The Scar (Valve)
Ian
McEwan's Atonement
Zadie
Smith's On Beauty
The Kite Runner
Norman
Corwin: Poet Journalist
Octavia
Butler
Syed
Akbar Hyder's Come Back To Afghanistan
Philip
Roth's The Plot Against America
Azar
Nafisi as a Literary Critic
Orhan
Pamuk's Snow (Valve)
Byatt's The
Game
John
Berryman
James
Wood's Book Against God
Kurban
Said
A
Lecture on Literature (Teaching Journal)
Karen
Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase (Book Review)
John
Hollander
George
Eliot skips Church (Biographical Note)
South Asian Literature
Early
Bengali Science Fiction (A popular post; part 1 of 2)
Sultana's
Dream, Feminist Utopias (part 2 of 2)
R.K.
Narayan, Malgudi Days (Revisiting a classic author)
Raja Rao and Czeslaw Milosz (Author Profile)
William
Dalrymple's City of Djinns (Book Review)
Katherine
Mayo's Mother India (The back-story behind this controversial text from the 1920s)
Saadat Hasan Manto's Letters To Uncle Sam (A Look at lesser-known essays by a great Urdu Writer)
Contemporary Pakistani
Writers (Quick Survey)
Tagore in America (At Sepia Mutiny)
Amrita
Pritam (Author Profile)
All
About H. Hatterr (Rediscovering an example of Indian Modernism from the 1940s; part 1 of 2)
In
Praise of Balderdash (and other words for nonsense) (part 2 of 2)
Indian
English: Hobson-Jobson
'Indian
English': Does it Exist?
Amitav
Ghosh (and me) on NPR (part 1 of 2)
After-Interview
Analysis (part 2 of 2)
Agha
Shahid Ali, Ghazals in English
Borges
and India
Amitav
Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (Book Review)
Ajeet
Cour: A Punjabi Writer (Author Profile)
Ramo
Samee, Thackeray, Hazlitt (Early 19th Century Cultural History)
SAWCC
Conference Notes
Samrat
Upadhyay (Book Review)
India-Oriented
Works at Gutenberg (Resource)
Jews
from India: Burnt Bread and Chutney (Book Review; Diasporic Cultural History)
Sarah
MacDonald's Holy Cow (Book Review)
Nirad
Chaudhuri (Teaching Journal)
Yusef
Komunyakaa in India (An African American Poet Goes to Calcutta)
Nirmal
Verma (Avant-Garde Hindi Writer; Author Profile)
Teaching:
Travel Writers
Notes:
Conference on South Asia
Amitava
Kumar, South Asian Literary Criticism (review of Bombay, London, New York)
Satan
and Shaitan (From Milton to The Satanic Verses)
V.S.
Naipaul Controversy (Secularism and the Study of Indian History)
Versions
of the Ramayana
Githa
Hariharan and A.S. Byatt
Suketu
Mehta and Samina Ali (Conference Notes)
Amitav
Ghosh on Tsunami Relief
Behzti (Censorship Controversy in the UK)
Behzti
2
Sukumar
Ray
Suketu
Mehta's Maximum City
Mulk Raj
Anand
Manju
Kapur
Partha
Chatterjee's 'A Princely Imposter?'
Modernism
Auden and
China
Auden
and Bruegel vs. Icarus
Robert
Frost, "The Flood"
Irish
English?
Science
and Poetry II
Science
and Poetry I
Wallace
Stevens
Orwell
III: The Road to Wigan Pier
Orwell
II: Shadiness
Orwell
I: Orwell and Michael Moore
Bloomsday
100 pt. 2
Bloomsday
100 pt. 1
Masterpieces
and Modernism: Marjorie Perloff (Valve)
Fat
Ulysses (Valve)
Masterpieces
and Modernism: Marjorie Perloff (Valve)
H.D.,
Hilda Doolittle
Katherine
Mansfield
Engaging Literary Theory
Theorizing Blogging,
Theorizing Theory (Valve)
Texture
Words
Rumpelstiltskin
and Narrative Theory
Toy/Story
Theory
Intro
to Edward Said
Challenges
to Postcolonial Theory (Valve)
Intertextuality
"Smart"
Criticism
Berube's
Employment of English
Composition
Without Rhetoric: John Guillory