Assistant 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: Amanda_Lagji@pitzer.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00 pm – 4:00pm; Thursday, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
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
Selected Publications
“Waiting in Motion: Mapping Postcolonial Fiction, New Mobilities, and Migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.” in Mobilities 14.2 (March 2019): 218-232
“Fragments of a World That “Doesn’t End”: The Apocalyptic Impulse in a Time of Perpetual War.” Post 45, online forum “Contemporaries” (http://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.
“Smoke and Mirrors: Generic Manipulation and Doubling in Dancing to ‘Almendra.’” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 13.2 (2016): 1-17.
“A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World.” Law, Culture and the Humanities. Published online before print 11 Feb. 2016. 1-14. doi: 1743872116630698.
“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
“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
