Nasrin Qader

Nasrin Qader is Associate Professor of French, holding a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of African Languages and Literatures. Trained as a comparatist, Qader consistently brings together Francophone African literature, Arabic literature of the Maghreb, Islamic thought and mysticism, and contemporary literary and visual theory. In 2009-2010, she was awarded a New Directions Fellowship by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which allowed her to study the religious and literary traditions of India. In particular, she is interested in the Persian and Hindi literatures of India as well as philosophies of Hinduism.

Nasrin Qader is the author of articles on French and Arabic literature of Africa. She has written on the work of Mohammad Barradah, Abdelkébir Khatibi, Abdelfattah Kilito and Tahar ben Jelloun of Morocco; on Moussa Ouled Ebnou of Mauritania; and on Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal. Her first book, Narratives of Catastrophe: Boris Diop, ben Jelloun, Khatibi (Fordham University Press, 2009) studies the relationship between récit (narration, story) and catastrophe, weaving literary texts by these three authors with the thought of Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, Ibn Arabi and others. Her second book tentatively titled Thresholds of Escape, Refuge and Dis/appearance studies the interactions between cinematic, photographic and literary dynamics and the implications of these interactions for politics and ethics. This project expands its geographical and linguistic frameworks by bringing into conversation works from Afghanistan, Morocco and Senegal in Persian, Arabic, French and English and explores the ways in which her New Directions training illuminates her ideas about vision, reflection and writing. Currently, she is working on a series of articles on the Persian poet of India, Mirza Abdel Qadir ‘Bedil’ and on the contemporary Afghan writer, filmmaker and photographer, Atiq Rahimi.

Qader has lectured in venues within the US and internationally. In the summer of 2012, she participated in the Institute for World Literature organized by Harvard University and Bilgi University, Istanbul, exploring the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of this method of literary inquiry.

Nasrin Qader is an active member of the core faculty of the Program in Comparative Literary Studies and the Program of African Studies.  She serves as the co-director of the French Interdisciplinary Group (FIG) http://www.fig.northwestern.edu/ and is the Director of Graduate Studies for French. She is also a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

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