Associate Professor of English,
Director of the PhD Programme in English, Ashoka University
Abir Bazaz is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University. He finished his MA, and then his PhD, in Asian Literatures, Cultures and Media at the University of Minnesota. He also has an MA in Humanities in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago, and an MA in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi.
He is also a documentary filmmaker.
Professor Bazaz’s research interests include Kashmiri literature, Urdu literature, South Asian literatures in English, Asian Cinemas, Religion and Cinema, Intellectual History of Islam in South Asia, Sufism, Faith and Literature, Existentialism, Negative Theology, Comparative Mysticism, and Violence Studies. He is currently working on a monograph titled The Negative Theology of Nund Rishi.
Publications
Films
Paradise on a River of Hell [29. mins., Beta SP, Color] (New Delhi: Public Service Broadcasting Trust, 2002)
About: Paradise on a River of Hell (co-directed with Meenu Gaur) is an independent documentary film about Kashmir in the 1990s.
Screened at: South Asia Human Rights Film Festival, New York; International 1001 Documentary Films Festival; Istanbul and Illuminating Oppression, a film festival on human rights at the Syracuse University; (opened) a three-day Conference on Kashmir at Swarthmore College, Philadelphia; Conference on “Film Theory: Between Indexicality and Virtuality” held in honour of Laura Mulvey at Leeds University (organized by AHRC Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History)
Swadhyaya [29. mins., Beta SP, Color] (New Delhi: Public Service Broadcasting Trust, 2004)
About: A documentary on the life of Pandurang Shastri Athavale, winner of the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership and Templeton Prize for Religion.
Screened at: The PSBT-UNESCO Festival 2004; National Film Festival of India 2004