Amanda Lagji

  • Associate Professor of English and World Literature
  • English and World Literature Field Group
Professor Amanda Lagji
Office Location

Broad Center 215

Office Hours
Wednesdays 1-2 pm and Fridays 9-11 am

With ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Since: 2017

PhD University of Massachusetts, Amherst

BA, Dickinson College

Global Anglophone literatures, postcolonial literature and theory, time and narrative, African literature, law and literature

Decolonial Futures/Postcolonial Now

World Literature in an Oceanic Context

Terror and the Text

Growing Up Postcolonial

Intro to World Lit (Texts on the Move)

Post-Apartheid Novels

, Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
Winner of the 2020 Annual Book Award by the Northeast Modern Language Association for Best Unpublished Book Manuscript.

“Forms of Futurity: The Entangled Temporalities of Eco-Terror in the Niger Delta,â€� in Temporalities in/of Crises in Anglophone Literatures, edited by Birgit Neumann and Sibylle Baumbach. Forthcoming 2024, Routledge.

“Colonial Clowns? The Tragicomedy of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Pacific Coast Philology, special issue edited by Stanley Orr, vol. 56, no. 2, pp.211-223. Backdated to 2021; in print May 2023.

“‘Contemporary’ Comparisons: The Silent Minaret at the Intersection of the ‘Post’ Debates.â€� In Post45 vs. The World, edited by William Welty, Vernon Press, January 2023, pp. 21-39.

“Waithood and Girlhood in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.â€� In Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century, edited by Rose Sackeyfio, Rowan, 2021, pp. 45-58.

“Heavenly Homes and Transnational Travel: Amanda Smith’s Religious Cosmopolitan Vision.â€� In Transnational Africana Women’s Fictions, edited by Cheryl Sterling, Routledge, 2021, pp. 52-68.

“Transnational Law and Literatures: A Post-Colonial Perspective.â€� In The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law, edited by Peer Zumbansen, Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 1051-1068. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197547410.013.48

“Terrorist Plots: Temporality, the Politics of Preemption and the Postcolonial Novel.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Studies in the Novel, vol. 52, no.4, December 2020, pp. 403-318. Special issue edited by Gaurav Desai.

Review of Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, by Leela Gandhi (2nd edition) for H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2019. 

“Waiting in Motion: Mapping Postcolonial Fiction, New Mobilities, and Migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.â€� in Mobilities 14.2 (March 2019): 218-232.

“Absurd Waiting in Samuel Beckett and Zakes Mda.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral, edited by Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald, Brill, 2019, pp. 125-139.
 

“Fragments of a World That “Doesn’t Endâ€�: The Apocalyptic Impulse in a Time of Perpetual War.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Post 45, online forum “Contemporariesâ€� 

“Marooned Time: Disruptive Waiting and Idleness in Carpentier and Coetzee.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 19.2 (2018): 1-22.

“‘Now’ is Here: Disillusionment and Urgency in Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;South Asian Review 37.3 (2016): 89-110. (Backdated; in print February 2018).

“Waiting for Now: The Temporality of Return in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;African Literature Today 34: Diaspora & Returns in Fiction (November 2016): 28-47.
 

“A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Law, Culture and the Humanities. Published online before print 11 Feb. 2016. 1-14. doi: 1743872116630698.

“Smoke and Mirrors: Generic Manipulation and Doubling in Dancing to ‘Almendra.’â¶Ä�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 13.2 (2016): 1-17.
 

“Revising the Narrative of Failure: Reconsidering State Failure in Nuruddin Farah’s Knots.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 45.4 (2014): 31-57.

“‘Willing Liberates’: Nietzschean Heroism and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.â€�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Pacific Coast Philology 46 (2011): 80-96.

“Policing Counter-Insurgency in The Secret Agent.â€� Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.

“The Labor of Love: Women’s ‘Work’ in Aminatta Forna’s Fiction.â€� Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.

“The ‘Fantastic’ Form of Msande Ntshanga’s Triangulum.â€� Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA) annual conference, Los Angeles, CA, November 2022.

“The Terrorist as Type: Exploiting the Implied Reader’s Expectations.� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Baltimore, MD, March 2022.

“[W]e can no longer be sure of the future’: Anticipating the Unfolding Oil Crisis in Okpewho’s Tides.â€� Temporalities of Crisis Workshop, organized by Birgit Neumann and Sibylle Baumbach. Held virtually, organized in Germany, December 2021.

“Decolonizing ‘Development’ in Caryl Phillips’s A State of Independence.â€� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Boston, Massachusetts. March 2020.

“Beyond Binaries: Delving into Deltas and Hungry Tides.� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Boston, Massachusetts. March 2020.

“Stung by Empire: Decolonizing Higher Education in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti.â€� British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah, Georgia. February 2020.

“Reading the Writing On/Behind the Wall: Palestine and State Terror.� Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, Seattle, Washington. January 2020.

“Colonial Clowns? The Tragicomedy of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street.â€� Pacific and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) annual conference, San Diego, California. November 2019.

“Camps and Postcolonies: Waiting in/for the Aftermath.� The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies conference, Auckland, New Zealand, July. 2019

“Timing Terror: Stopped Watches Across the Twentieth Century and Beyond.� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Washington, D.C., March. 2019

“Teaching Terror in the Postcolonial Classroom.� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Washington, D.C., March. 2019

“Registering Insecurities in the Global War of/on Terror.� British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah, Georgia, February. 2019

“The Enduring Spectacle of the Aftermath: Embodying the Blast in The Association of Small Bombs.� South Asian Literary Association (SALA) annual conference, Chicago, IL, January. 2019

“Letters to the Future: Petroleum, Protest, and Persistence.� Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, Chicago, IL, January. 2019

“Terrorist Plots: Terrorism, Temporality, and the Politics of Preemption.â€� Marquis Salon Talk, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½, October. 2018

“Colonial Time Regimes in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure.� The Social Life of Time, International and Interdisciplinary Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, June. 2018

“The Postcolonial Petroscape of Isidore Okpewho’s Tides.� African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Washington D.C., May. 2018

“Waiting on the Move in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.� Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April. 2018

“Waithood and Girlhood in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.� Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, New York, NY, January. 2018