Shahnawaz is interested in exploring the literary culture of Kashmir between 1930 and 1960: a period when the literary culture was making a shift from the Sanskritic and mostly, the Persianate tradition to Kashmiri vernacular wherein the revival of Kashmiri language and literature was the primary concern of Kashmiri poets, Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor, Abdul Ahad Azad, Dinanath Nadim, Amin Kamil and Rehman Rahi. The works of these poets constitute what Kashmiri literary critics have called Naev Shaiyri or Modern Kashmiri poetry. Shahnawaz seeks to explore what constitutes this “modern” in Kashmiri poetry and how do the works of these poets relate to the larger currents of modernism.
