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Dr Abida Younas

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Until 2026. I am also a guest lecturer at the University of Warwick. Before this post, I was a postgraduate tutor at the University of Glasgow. My first book reads contemporary Anglo-Arab writing through a critical-theoretical framework of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that Deleuze and Guattari derive their theory of minor literature from analyzing Western writings. Applying the same theory uncritically in the context of Postcolonial Anglo-Arab literature would be limiting and restrictive. In my study, I use the concept of minor literature and reformulate it according to the emerging literature, thereby contributing to developing a critical theoretical framework suited to the analysis of emerging postcolonial Post-Arab Spring literature.

My current research project focuses on refugee literature and its relationship with immigration legislation in the UK, USA, and Europe. My forthcoming book undertakes a comparative analysis of refugee writings, examining how these narratives engage with and resist a series of immigration policies enacted by Western governments. Rather than presenting refugee literature as solely literature of despair or testimonial writing, my work explores how it functions as a mode of pliability and resistance, countering the enduring effects of colonial control in postcolonial contexts.

Research Interest

I specialize in Postcolonial Literature, Global Anglophone Literature, and Contemporary Literature.

Publications

Book

Post-Arab Spring Narratives: A Minor Literature in Making, Palgrave MacMillan, 2023.

Book Chapters

Abida Younas, and Kawthar Al-Othman. “The Return of the Repressed: Magical Realism in Salwa Bakr’s The Golden Chariot and Ibrahim Al-Koni’s The Bleeding of the Stone.” In Magical Realism in Africa: Literary and Dramatic Explorations, Routledge, 2024.

Abida Younas, and Kawthar Al-Othman. “Postcolonial Megacities go Feral: A Critical

Study of the selected Anglophone fiction.” In Urban Poetics and Politics in Contemporary

South Asia and the Middle East, IGI Publications, 2022.

Aiman Aslam, and Abida Younas. “Muslim Women’s Contribution in Poetry, Prose, and Fiction (1870-1940).” in Muslim Women’s writers of the Sub-continent (1870-1940), Munazza Yaqoob and Sofia Hussain (Ed), Emel Publications, 2014, 13-47.

Journal Articles

“Configuring the Present for the Future: Personal Narratives of the Arab Spring.” British Journal Of Middle Eastern Studies 47 (2022): 1-15.

“Debating Ambivalence of Anglo-Pakistani Authors: Between Minor Literature And Marketable Commodity.” Palarch’s Journal Of Archaeology Of Egypt/Egyptology 19 (2022): 1352-1365.

“Magical Realism and Metafiction in Post-Arab Spring Literature: Narratives of Discontent and Celebration.” British Journal Of Middle Eastern Studies 47 (2018): 544-559.

“The Wrongs of the Subaltern’s Rights: A Critique on Postcolonial Diasporic Authors.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 9 (2017): 132-141.

“Tracing the Roots of Terrorism: A study of Melancholy in The Sentimental Terrorist and Checkpoint.Exploration: A Literary and Research Journal 27 (2016): 92-111.

“Desire and Consumerism in the Contemporary American Novels”. Journal of Social Science and Humanities 21 (2013): 1-21.

Forthcoming

“Revealing the Dichotomy: Necrocities and Borderscapes in Refugee Literature and Immigration Law.” Cogent Arts and Humanities (upcoming).