COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES PROGRAM

Laiba Niaz Paracha (she/her) graduated from LUMS University, Lahore, in 2021, with a BA in English and a minor in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Laiba's aim is to further research the work of an understudied constellation of women writers across the Indo-Persian, South-East, and Eastern regions of continental Asia. Her research interests include the Urdu and Persian ghazal, and how this form of poetic expression retains the potential for a cosmopolitan imaginary landscape. In considering side-by-side the work of poets who engage in the active task of feminine and transnational world-building, she hopes to contextualize the historical and literary contributions of women writers who evade easy categorization, and highlight the ways in which their work necessitates the consistent reevaluation of feminist thought and practice.