Nadia Backleh
Nadia Hajal - Backleh: PhD researcher, English and Comparative Literary Studies (2023-)
Academic Qualification:
2nd MA in Critical Theory (Distinction), University of Kent (UK).
MA in Gender, Law and Development (First Class), Birzeit University (Palestine)
Funding: Doctoral College access scholarship - Sanctuary (Warwick)
Email: Nadia.Backleh@warwick.ac.uk
PhD Research: "Migration and World Literature in the age of Global Modernity"
Situated at the nexus of literature and theory, migration and labour studies, colonial/postcolonial studies, and global scholarship of empire, the project examines how world literature since the 1980s has engaged with the archetypal condition of migration in the historical conjuncture of global capitalism and late imperialism. Specifically, how fiction and non-fiction register: (1) cultures of migration, (2) predicaments of global capitalism and empire on migrant masses, and (3) modalities through which migrants seek a way out of their dire conditions. Methodologically, the research anchors itself to materialism. It brings a literary-critical eye to examine related scholarly debates. And it argues for the centrality of capital and class analysis to realistically understand migrants' conditions apart from neoliberal mythologies as well as to concretize the potentials and limitations of the registered spaces and modalities of resistance.
Supervisors: Prof. Paulo de Medeiros, and Prof. Graeme Macdonald
Publications:
(2024). "Towards Rethinking the Politics of Global Cultures of Migration", in Navigating Borders: Perspectives on Migration and identity. London: Interdisciplinary Discourses. pp.46-68.
(2024). "The Question of Freedom, Democracy and Human Dignity at the “End of History”: Lea Ypi’s Free", Book Review, in Romman Cultural Magazine (Arabic).
Teaching:
- University of Warwick: "Epic into Novel" (GTA programme 2024-25)
- Birzeit University (2009-2023): "Introduction to Feminist Theories", "Women in Arab Society", "English Academic Writing", "Modern and Contemporary European Civilization", "Modern and Contemporary Arab Thought", "Psychology of Self and Identity", and "English Readings in Social and Human Sciences".
Module development:
(2021). "Psychology of Self and Identity", Birzeit University Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Conferences:
- (Oct 2024). "The Socialism of the Anti-Colonial Feminist Narrations of Sahar Khalifeh: The Pre-Oslo Novels". The Warwick HRC conference Radical Traditions. University of Warwick.
- (Nov 2023). "Narrating Labour Migration in Global China: Between Neoliberal and Socialist Paradigms". Historical Materialism 20th Conference. SOAS, UK.
- (May 2022). "Dispossession and Labor Migration in Hsiao-Hung Pai’s Non-fiction Scattered Sand (2012)" in “Dispossession: A symposium on Marxism, Culture, Extraction, and Enclosure”, the Warwick Humanities Research Centre, University of Warwick, UK.
- (Apr 2022). "Thinking Global Migration, Borders and Politics of Cultural Hybridity" in “Somewhere in Between: Borders and Borderlands” conference, organized by the London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, UK.
Organizing & Moderating:
- Organiser, the ECLS Palestinian Literature and Culture Reading Group, an on-going recent initiative in the University of Warwick English and Comparative Literary Studies Department, convened twice a term and open to ECLS students and professors as well as to Warwick community.
- Co-Organiser & moderator, "Beyond the Time of Genocide: Social Pain as a Site of Social Action and Hope in the Gaza Strip", a seminar in cooperation with Warwick Social Theory Centre. Jan 2025. University of Warwick.
- Panel moderator, "Reconstructing Identity in Diaspora". Radical Traditions conference. Oct 2024. University of Warwick.
- Co-Organiser, the ECLS 20th Annual PG Symposium, a one-day conference showcasing the work of the University of Warwick's postgraduates in English and Comparative Literary Studies and related disciplines, May 2024. University of Warwick.