Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt

NELK

Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt

Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt

Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt

Contact

Office: IG 4.157
Tel.: 069/798-32354

Email: N.Butt@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Office hour during the summer semester: Monday  3 - 4 pm

To sign up, please contact Cornelia Argast and mention the reason for your visit.

Nadia Butt did her MA (1999) in British and American Literature (Government College, Lahore) and MPhil (2001) in English and Postcolonial Literatures (the University of the Punjab, Lahore) in Pakistan. Having won the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation scholarship (2006-2008), she gained her PhD at Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt in 2009 with a thesis on "Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English Novels" (published in 2015 by De Gryuter). In 2022, she obtained her Post-doc ("Habilitation") in English Studies at the Faculty of British and American Studies at Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen with a thesis on "Mapping Other Routes: The Travelling Imagination in Anglophone Literatures from the 18th Century to the Present". In 2018, she was awarded the Herbert-Stolzenberg Prize for excellence in teaching.

From October 2009 to September 2023, she was a full-time lecturer in English ("Studienrätin auf Lebenszeit") at the English Department of Giessen University. During this time, she was an active member of Giessener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften (GGK) / International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). In 2014, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford, funded by European Research Council.  Besides teaching at the University of Frankfurt, the University of Giessen, and the University of Munster, she has also taught at the University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2018), Catholic University, Lisbon (2019), and the University of Columbo (2018-2019).

In 2023, she was appointed Professor of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Together with Michelle Stork, she co-directs the Forum of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures.

Team

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin/Research Associate

Wissenschatliche Hilfskraft

  • Tasnim El Fechtali

Secretary

PhD Candidates

More information about the Forum of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

Research & CV

Research & CV

Research Interests
  • Transcultural Theory and Literature
  • Postcolonial Theory
  • Memory Studies
  • Literature of Mobility and Migration
  • Travel Theory and Literature
  • South Asian Anglophone Literature
  • African and Arab Anglophone Literature
  • Diasporic Literature in Britain, America, and Canada
  • Indigenous Literatures in North America, Australia, and New Zealand
  • English and Comparative Literature

Education
2022 Post-doc “Mapping Other Routes: The Travelling Imagination in Anglophone Literatures from the Eighteenth Century to the Present,” Institute of British and American Studies, University of Giessen. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ansgar Nünning
2009 PhD “Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English Novels,” Department of New Literatures in English and Culture, Institute of British and American Studies, University of Frankfurt. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler
2001 MPhil in English and Postcolonial Literatures, Department of English Language and Literature, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan
1999 MA in English Literature, Department of English, Government College, Lahore, Pakistan
 

Positions

Since 10/2023
Professor of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Goethe University Frankfurt

10/2009 – 09/2023
Senior Lecturer of English and Cultural Studies, Institute of British and American Studies, University of Giessen

12/2018 – 01/2019
Visiting Associate Lecturer at the University of Columbo, Sri Lanka

08 2018
Visiting Associate Lecturer of English at the University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Fellowships and Awards (Selected) 

10/2019
Awarded the Herbet-Stolzenberg-Prize for excellence in teaching by the University of Giessen

08/2014
COST scholarship, a research body funded by the European Union to do a three-week long research on transcultural literatures in the Department of English, University of Oxford

01/2006 - 12/2008
Friedrich-Naumann Foundation scholarship to do the doctorate in the Department of New Literatures in English and Culture at the University of Frankfurt

Commission of Trust

Since 2023
Guest Editor, The European Journal of English Studies (ejes). Routledge: Taylor and Francis

Since 2023
Peer-Reviewer of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Since 2021
Member of the Selection Committee of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation) for MA students

Since 2018
Reviewer, The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture/Brill, Publications/Routledge – South Asian Studies/Postcolonial Text

Publications

Publications

Book Publications

  1. (Under consideration) Mapping Other Routes: The Travelling Imagination in Anglophone Literatures from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. New York and London: Routledge. (Monograph)
  2. (2015) Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English Novels. Berlin: De Gruyter. (Monograph)

 

Journals and Edited Volumes (Selected)

  1. (2024) Special Issue. European Journal of English Studies (EJES). Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Volume 29. “The Poetics and Politics of Gender, Mobility and Migration in the New Anglophone Literatures”. Guest editors. Nadia Butt, Radhika Mohanram and Michelle Stork. Call for Papers online. (in progress) 
  2. (2024) Special Issue. Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society. Brill Publication. “Africa in Europe, Europe in Africa: Transcultural Histories in Contemporary Anglophone African Literature,” with Michelle Stork. (in progress) 
  3. (2023) The Anglophone Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments. WVT Handbücher zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium, with Ansgar Nünning & Alexander Scherr). Trier: WVT.
  4. (2022) Special Issue “Rethinking Postcolonial Europe: Moving Identities, Changing Subjectivities”. Postcolonial Interventions. Vol VII, Issue 1, 31 January, with Robert Clarke and Theresa Krampe.

 

Research Papers (Selected)

  1. (2024) “Between Agency and Victimhood: Forms of Self-Assertion in Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage: From Cairo to America – A Woman’s Journey (1999) and Wafa Faith Hallam’s The Road from Morocco (2011).” With Saleh Chaoui. Paper submitted to the GAPS Volume. Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. Edited by Frank Schulze-Engler and Pavan Malreddy.
  2. (2024) “Resistance and Resilience in the Novels of Political Violence in India.” In: Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Indian Fiction in English. Edited by Emma Dawson Varughese. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-20. (in progess) 
  3. (2024) “Entangled Family Histories: The Partition of India as Generational Memory in Indian Diasporic Novel.” Special Issue “Memory, Materiality, and Forgetting in the Postcolonial South Asian Diaspora”. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Routledge: Taylor and Francis Edited by Avishek Parui. Routledge, pp. 1-15. (in progress)
  4. (In progress) Chapter 3. “National and Transcultural Memory on the Indian Subcontinent.” In: The Oxford Handbook of History and Memory. Edited by Christina Morina and Wulf Kansteiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  5. (Under Review) “The Novelist as Traveller: (Re)Imagining the Orient in Charles James Wills’s Behind an Eastern Veil (1894).” Nineteenth Century Literature. California: University of California Press, pp. 1-25.
  6. (2024) “The Refugee as the New Nomad: Reading Helon Habila's Travellers (2019) and Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017) as Literature of Mobility.” In: Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 53 (1). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, pp. 71-89.
  7. (2024) “‘Mobility at Large’: Anglophone Travel Writing as a Medium of Transcultural Communication in a Global Context.” In: The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature. London: Bloomsbury Press. Edited by Hanna Teichler, Magdalena Pfalzgraf, and Silvia Anastasijevic, pp. 209-231.
  8. (2023) “The Reversed Gaze : Krishnabhabini Das’s Travelogue A Bengali Lady in England (1885) as a Transnational Narrative.” Studies in Travel Writing. Routledge: Taylor and Francis. Edited by Heidi Liedke and Sandra Vlasta, pp. 53-70.
  9. (2023) “Walking as a Gendered Practice: Travel and Transgressions in Henry James’s Daisy Miller (1878) and The Wings of the Dove (1902).” With Wibke Schniedermann. The Journal of Victorian Culture. Oxford Academic Press. Edited by Nancy Henry, pp.371-388. In print.
  10. (2023) “The Anglophone Road Novel: Moving Memories, Histories, and Identities in Jamal Mahjoub’s Travelling with Djinns (2003) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005).” With Michelle Stork. In: The Anglophone Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments: WVT Handbücher zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium. Edited by Nadia Butt, Ansgar Nünning & Alexander Scherr, Trier: WVT, pp. 283-299.
  11. (2023) “Fictions of Transculturality an Age of Global Connectivity: The Global Anglophone Novel in the 21st Century.” In: The Anglophone Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments : WVT Handbücher zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium. With Ansgar Nünning & Alexander Scherr, Trier: WVT, pp. 11-29.
  12. (2023) “‘Travelling Across the Lines’: Investigating Transcultural Memory in Twentieth-Century African Anglophone Literatures.” Research paper for Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces. Edited by Laurent McFalls and Astrid Fellner. Munster and New York: Waxmann, pp. 49-67.
  13. (2022) “Introduction” to the special issue “Rethinking Postcolonial Europe: Moving Identities, Changing Subjectivities.” In: Postcolonial Interventions. Vol VII, Issue 1, 31 January (together with Robert Clarke and Theresa Krampe), pp. 14-49.
  14. (2022) “Reinventing the Self: Travel as Experience in V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life (2001) as a Fictional Autobiography.” In: Caribbean Quarterly: A Journal of Caribbean Culture. Taylor and Francis. Ed. Kim Robinson-Walcott. (In print), pp. 348-369.
  15. (2021) “New Approaches to the Concept of Memory in Twenty-First Century Literature.” In: Literature and Literary Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Cultural Concerns, Concepts, Case Studies. Edited by Ansgar Nünning, Vera Nünning and Alexander Scherr. Trier: ELCH – WVT, pp. 30-51.
  16. (2021) “Cosmopolitan Travellers in a ‘Deterritorialized’ World: Transcultural Encounters in Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (2000).” In: Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism. Taylor and Francis, pp 331-348.
  17. (2020) “Travel and Transformations: The Transcultural Predicament of Female Travellers in E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India (1924).” In : E.M.Forster Anniversary Issue - Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw. N 10. Eds. Krzysztof Fordonski, Anna Kwiatkowska, Paweł Wojtasand Heiko Zimmermann, pp. 141-162.
  18. (2019) “The Location of Transcultural Memory in Vikram Seth’s Two Lives (2005).” In: Journal of Aesthetics and Culture. Taylor and Francis: Special Issue - "Remembering between Travel and Locatedness: New Horizons of Cultural and Media Memory Studies". Edited by Astrid Erll, Paul Vickers and Jarula Wegner, pp 15- 23.
  19. (2019) “North-South Connections: The Representations of Travel and Travellers in the Fictional Memoir My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past(2005) by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala”. In: In Special Issue: “Postcolonial Narrations – Travelling Cultures, Moving Centres”. Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium. Vol 3 No 1 2019. Edited by Silvia Anastasijevic, Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler, pp 9-26.
  20. (2018) “The Chronotope of House: Negotiating Domestic Realms of Memory in the Pakistani Television Dramas of Haseena Moin”. In: Sagar: A South Asian Research Journal. Published by the University of Texas. Volume XXVI, pp. 28-67.
  21. (2014) “‘Chutneyfying’ Memory and History: Mapping Transcultural India in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980).” In: South Asian Review. Taylor and Francis. Special Issue on Rushdie. Edited by P.S. Chauhan, pp. 37-53.
  22. (2011) “East-West Encounters: Teaching Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.” In: Beyond ‘Other’ Cultures: Transcultural Perspectives on Teaching the New Literatures in English. Eds. Frank Schulze-Engler and Sabine Doff. Trier: Wissenschftlicher Verlag, pp.175-189.
  23. (2010) “Between Dream and Nightmare: Representation of Eastern Diaspora in Britain in the Film Eastern Promises.” In: Facing the East in the West: Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture. Edited by Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker and Sissy Helff.  IFAVL. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, pp. 245-258.
  24. (2009) “Negotiating Untranslatability and Islam in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator.” In: Special Issue Matatu: Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe. Edited by Sissy Helff, Elisabeth Bakers, Daniela Merolla, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, pp. 167-179.
  25. (2009) “Fictions of Transcultural Memory: Zulfikar Ghose’s The Triple Mirror of the Self as an Imaginative Reconstruction of the Self in Multiple Worlds.” In: Transcultural English Studies: Theories, Fictions, Realities. Edited by Frank Schulze-Engler and Sissy Helff. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, pp. 293-308.
  26. (2009) “Strange Encounters: Negotiating the Ambivalence of Transcultural Memory in Sunetra Gupta’s Memories of Rain.” In: Cultures in Process: Encounter and Experience. Edited by Ralf Schneider and Stephan Gramley, Bielefeld: Aisthesus Press, pp. 129-138.
  27. (2009) “Inventing or Recalling the Contact Zones: Transcultural Spaces in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines.” In: Postcolonial Text, Vol 4, No 3. Edited by Heike. H. Harting and Ranjini Mendis, Open Humanities Press, E-Journal, pp-1-16.
  28. (2008) “Between Orthodoxy and Modernity: Mapping the Transcultural Predicaments of Pakistani Immigrants in Multi-Ethnic Britain in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers.” In: Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives in Literature, Film and the Arts after 9/11. Edited by Barbara Korte, Ulrike Pirker and Christoph Reinfandt, IFAVL. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, pp. 153-170.

 

Interviews in Research Journals/Newspaper Articles/Short Pieces (Selected)

  1. (2023) “The Travelling Imagination.” In: Working Definitions in Literature and Tourism: A Research Guide. Faro: CIAC - Centro de Investigação em Artes e Comunicação da Universidade do Algarve. Edited by Maria José Marques and Sílvia Quinteiro, pp. 141-143.
  2. (2017) “Violence and the Partition of India: Voices from Pakistan.” In: Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium Vol. 2 No 1, pp 10-25. Edited by Anindya Sekhar and Pavan Malreddy.
  3. (2016) "Germany’s Dilemma.” The Friday Times, Pakistan. Web.
  4. (2014) “Bollywood.” In: Metzler Lexikon Moderne Mythen. Eds. Stephanie Wodianka and Juilane Ebert. Stuttgard: J.B Metzler, pp. 53-55.
  5. (2012) “I Want to Throw Punches.” (An Interview with Asian British artist Faiza Butt). The Friday Times, Pakistan, 23. November. Web.
  6. (2010) Muneeza Shamsie, ed. And the World Changed: Stories by Pakistani Women (2008). Book Review In: Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 247. pp. 431 - 433.
  7. (2009) Robert J.C. Young, The Idea of English Ethnicity (2007). Book Review In: Journal for the Study of British Cultures, edited by R. Emig, J. Kamm, C. Schmitt-Kilb and G. Stedman, Vol 16. No.1, pp.102-103. 
  8. (2008) Alastair Pennycook, Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows (2007). Book Review In: Journal for the Study of British Cultures, edited by R. Emig, J. Kamm, C. Schmitt-Kilb and G. Stedman, Vol 15.

 

Conference Papers/Workshop Presentations

  1. (2023) “Mobile Lives, Nomadic Selves: Between Home and Homelessness in the Road Film Nomadland (2020)” together with Michelle Stork at the conference on travel light. Organized by Marziyeh Ghoreishi at Western University, Canada. March 11-12.
  2. (2023) “Automobility and Postcolonial Infrastructures: Investigating the Dynamics of Travel and Tourism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Road Novel Soul Tourists (2005)” at the GAPS conference at the University of Constance. Organized by Timo Müller. 18-20 May.
  3. (2023) “Gender and Automobility in Pakistani Film Dukhtar or Daughter” at the conference on “Representing Automobility in Literature and Film / Représenter la locomotion automobile dans la littérature et le cinema” at the University of Frankfurt. Organized by Melanie Schneider and Michelle Stork. 01-02 June.
  4. (2022) “Theories of Travel and Travel writing” at the conference on travel writing at University of Tartu. Organized by Sara Bédard-Goulet. 06-08 July.
  5. (2022) “National and Transnational Memory on the Indian Subcontinent” at the workshop about Oxford Handbook of History and Memory. Organized by Prof. Christina Moria and Prof. Wulf Kansteiner at the University of Bielefeld in collaboration with the University of Aarhus. January 20-21.
  6. (2021) “Deterritorialized Beings as Cosmopolitan Travellers: Transcultural Mo(ve)ments in Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul (2000)” at the EACLALS Triennial Conference : ‘Transcultural Mo(ve)ments: Memories, Writings, Embodiments’ at the Cardiff University, Wales. Organized by Prof. Radhika Mohanram. June 28-30.
  7. (2021) “Encountering the 'Imperial Other': Representations of Occidental Lifestyles in Krishnabhabini Das's Travelogue A Bengali Lady in England' at the virtual conference ‘Transnationalism in the Long-Nineteenth Century' at the University of Southampton. Organized by Emma Hills. 13 January.
  8. (2019) “Reinventing the Self: Travel as Experience in V.S. Naipaul’s Fictional Autobiography Half a Life” at the conference Borders and Crossing at the University of Leicester. Organized by Tim Hannigan. Funded by Post-Doc Funds, University of Giessen. 4–6 July.
  9. (2017) ‘Strange Encounters’: Reading the Transcultural Predicament of Female Travellers in E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India (1924) and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust (1971) at the University of Berlin. Organized by Gigi Adair. 27-28 October.
  10. (2017) “Journey as a Quest in the Novels of E.M.Forster” at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Organized by Julia Szołtysek. Funded by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst/German Academic Exchange Service). 20-23 September.
  11. (2016) “House as a Realm of Memory in Pakistani TV Dramas” at the workshop on Cultural Memory together with the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform at the University of Giessen. Organized by Paul Vicker and Jarula M.L.Wegner. May 25-27.
  12. (2015) “The Mental Dimensions of Memory Cultures” at Worchester College Oxford. Organized by Prof. Ben Morgan. Funded by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst/German Academic Exchange Service). April 13-15
  13. (2013) “Phantoms of Generational Memory” at the University of Krakow. Organized by Prof. Barbara Tornquist Plewa. Funded by COST, supported by European Union Research Council. September 16-17.
  14. (2013) “Transcultural Memory and South Asian Anglophone Literature” at the University of Utrecht. Organized by Prof. Ann Rigney and Prof. Astrid Erll. Funded by COST, supported by European Union Research Council. June 17-19.
  15. (2012) “Trans-regionalism and the New Literatures” at the University of Bern. Organized by Prof. Virginia Richter. Funded by the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation, an institute of liberal politics. May 18-20.
  16. (2008) “Between Military and Mosque” at the University of Venice. Organized by EACLAS.Funded by Friends and Sponsors of the University of Frankfurt. March 25-29.
  17. (2007) “Storytelling and Transcultural Recollection” at the University of British Columbia. Organized by ACLALS. Funded by Friends and Sponsors of the University of Frankfurt. August 17-22.
  18. (2005) “A Search for Transcultural Spaces in Postcolonial India” at the University of Malta. Organized by EACLAS. Funded by Friends and Sponsors of the University of Frankfurt. March 21-26.

 

Invited Talks (Selected)

  1. (2023) “Islam and Transnational Literature.” Public Lecture at the University of Edinburgh. Invited by Ines Aščerić-Todd. 04 April.
  2. (2021) “Mobility at Large: The Anglophone Travel Writing and Transcultural Communication.” International Conference ‘Humanities through Literature, Film and Media. Organized by Rashmi Rekha Borah. Vellore Institute of Technology. School of Social Sciences and Language. VIT, Chennai. 19-20 October.
  3. (2021) “Journeys through Europe: The Anglophone Travel Writing and Postcoloniality.” International conference as part of the 8th Postcolonial Narration Forum at the University of Giessen. Invited by Theresa Krampe, 11-12 February.
  4. (2020): “‘Memory on the Move’: Rethinking Memory, Mobility and Modernity in the Age of Global Travel” as part of the cooperation between the Madras Memory Studies Platform, and Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform. Organized by Prof. Astrid Erll and Prof. Avishek Parui. 24 November.  
  5. (2020) “Travel and Transformations: Investigating Transcultural Memory in Anglophone Literatures” as part of The International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces” (Trier, Montréal, Saarbrücken), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Invited by Prof. Astrid Fellner at the University of Saarland. 22 June.
  6. (2019) “Colonial Myths and Metaphors in Eighteenth-Century Anglophone Novel” as part of the Erasmus exchange of researchers with The Catholic University Portugal, Lisbon. Invited by Prof. Alexandra Lopes. 07 October.
  7. (2018) “Representation of Travel and Transculturation in Nineteenth-Century British Literature”. Guest Lecture, organised by Prof. Neloufer de Mel at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, 04 of January.
  8. (2017) ‘Travelling Cultures’: Reading Nineteenth-Century British Narratives about Movement and Mobility” as part of the MA programme “Moving Cultures” at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, 7 December.
  9. (2015) “Metaphors of Memory and Modernity in South Asian Anglophone Novels and Films.” New Frontiers in Memory Studies (Lecture Series), organised by Prof. Dr. Astrid Erll at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, 3 February.