Amanda Lagji
Associate Professor of English and World Literature
With Pitzer Since: 2017
Field Group: English and World Literature
Campus Address: Broad Center 215
Phone: 909.607.0844
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: See Faculty Directory
Educational Background
PhD University of Massachusetts, Amherst
BA, Dickinson College
Research Interests
Global Anglophone literatures, postcolonial literature and theory, time and narrative, African literature, law and literature
Recent Courses
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
Books
Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now, Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
Winner of the 2020 Annual Book Award by the Northeast Modern Language Association for Best Unpublished Book Manuscript.
Articles and Book Chapters
“Forms of Futurity: The Entangled Temporalities of Eco-Terror in the Niger Delta,” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” In Transnational Africana Women’s Fictions, edited by Cheryl Sterling, Routledge, 2021, pp. 52-68.
“Transnational Law and Literatures: A Post-Colonial Perspective.” 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.” 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. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54600
“Waiting in Motion: Mapping Postcolonial Fiction, New Mobilities, and Migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.” in Mobilities 14.2 (March 2019): 218-232.
“Absurd Waiting in Samuel Beckett and Zakes Mda.” 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 End”: The Apocalyptic Impulse in a Time of Perpetual War.” Post 45, online forum “Contemporaries” (https://post45.research.yale.edu/2019/02/fragments-of-a-world-that-doesnt-end-the-apocalyptic-impulse-in-a-time-of-perpetual-war/)
“Marooned Time: Disruptive Waiting and Idleness in Carpentier and Coetzee.” 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.” 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.” African Literature Today 34: Diaspora & Returns in Fiction (November 2016): 28-47.
“A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World.” 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.’” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 13.2 (2016): 1-17.
“Revising the Narrative of Failure: Reconsidering State Failure in Nuruddin Farah’s Knots.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 45.4 (2014): 31-57.
“‘Willing Liberates’: Nietzschean Heroism and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” Pacific Coast Philology 46 (2011): 80-96.
Selected Conference Presentations
“Policing Counter-Insurgency in The Secret Agent.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.
“The Labor of Love: Women’s ‘Work’ in Aminatta Forna’s Fiction.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.
“The ‘Fantastic’ Form of Msande Ntshanga’s Triangulum.” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” Marquis Salon Talk, Pitzer College, 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
