Essay / Rokeya’s relevance to Palestinian feminism
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online), the first known use of the term ‘feminism’–
22 December 2023, 18:00 PM
Essay / On the Palestine Question: Roald Dahl, Harold Pinter, and others
On Saturday, February 15, 2003, I was part of a 15-coach convoy from Portsmouth to London, UK.
29 November 2023, 18:00 PM
TRIBUTE / Razia Khan Amin: A Bangladeshi writer in English
As an academic, I often share with students my writings that are related to the courses I teach. That was not the case with our educators when I was a student in the Department of English at Dhaka University. The reason was not because there were no writers among our teachers.
30 December 2022, 18:00 PM
Book Review / Muslim women in the crucible of feminist theory
Writer and academic Elora Shehabuddin has lived in a number of countries and had a fair share of exposure to multicultural environments. Her lived experience must have proved helpful in bringing in a comprehensive perspective to the discussion in Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press 2021; University Press Limited 2022).
25 November 2022, 18:00 PM
Alice Beck Kehoe’s Girl Archaeologist and gender relations in US society
Alice Beck Kehoe (1934-) is a family friend, and I have her permission to use her first name in short for this essay. After reading Alice’s autobiography Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession (2022), Raudah, my wife, recommended the book to me with confidence that I would love it.
7 October 2022, 18:00 PM
ESSAY / Ali Riaz’s ‘More than Meets the Eye’ and a writer’s responsibility
Writers and intellectuals are obligated to stir moral indignation at gross injustices and the plight of the masses.
27 July 2022, 18:00 PM
Humayun Kabir, Men and Rivers, and Faridpur
Writer, statesman and educationalist Humayun Kabir (1906-69) was born in Komarpur near Faridpur town. The childhood of this cosmopolitan intellectual was spent in a rural culture.
22 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Rokeya Stands Tall
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s (1880-1932) ancestors came from Tabriz in Iran to settle down in this region. During her lifetime, Bangladesh as an independent country did not exist. We call her a Bangladeshi writer because she was born in Pairaband, Rangpur, in what is now Bangladesh. However, the site of her activism was Calcutta.
24 December 2021, 18:00 PM
Rokeya’s relevance to Palestinian feminism
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online), the first known use of the term ‘feminism’–
22 December 2023, 18:00 PM
On the Palestine Question: Roald Dahl, Harold Pinter, and others
On Saturday, February 15, 2003, I was part of a 15-coach convoy from Portsmouth to London, UK.
29 November 2023, 18:00 PM
Razia Khan Amin: A Bangladeshi writer in English
As an academic, I often share with students my writings that are related to the courses I teach. That was not the case with our educators when I was a student in the Department of English at Dhaka University. The reason was not because there were no writers among our teachers.
30 December 2022, 18:00 PM
Muslim women in the crucible of feminist theory
Writer and academic Elora Shehabuddin has lived in a number of countries and had a fair share of exposure to multicultural environments. Her lived experience must have proved helpful in bringing in a comprehensive perspective to the discussion in Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press 2021; University Press Limited 2022).
25 November 2022, 18:00 PM
Alice Beck Kehoe’s Girl Archaeologist and gender relations in US society
Alice Beck Kehoe (1934-) is a family friend, and I have her permission to use her first name in short for this essay. After reading Alice’s autobiography Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession (2022), Raudah, my wife, recommended the book to me with confidence that I would love it.
7 October 2022, 18:00 PM
Ali Riaz’s ‘More than Meets the Eye’ and a writer’s responsibility
Writers and intellectuals are obligated to stir moral indignation at gross injustices and the plight of the masses.
27 July 2022, 18:00 PM
Humayun Kabir, Men and Rivers, and Faridpur
Writer, statesman and educationalist Humayun Kabir (1906-69) was born in Komarpur near Faridpur town. The childhood of this cosmopolitan intellectual was spent in a rural culture.
22 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Rokeya Stands Tall
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s (1880-1932) ancestors came from Tabriz in Iran to settle down in this region. During her lifetime, Bangladesh as an independent country did not exist. We call her a Bangladeshi writer because she was born in Pairaband, Rangpur, in what is now Bangladesh. However, the site of her activism was Calcutta.
24 December 2021, 18:00 PM
Remembering my teacher Shah Abdul Hannan
Sometime in October 2001, I attended a discussion programme at Markfield Conference Centre in Leicestershire, UK. There was a lively debate on Islamic banking over lunch, involving Murad Wilfried Hofmann (1931-2020) and Shah Abdul Hannan (1939-2021).
4 July 2021, 18:00 PM
Minnat Ali’s Kafoner Lekha and the biography of an autobiography
After savouring English and world literature for quite a while, I developed an interest in South Asian literature. This led me to study writers of this literary tradition.
21 May 2021, 18:00 PM
Visiting Norwich, a UNESCO City of Literature
In early September 2019, I made a weeklong trip to the UK to present conference papers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
8 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Literary Tourism: Exploring Charles Dickens’ Rochester
When my niece Mubasshira and her husband Morsed told me that they had moved from East London to Kent, I had little idea of the area in which they relocated. Prior to my two-week trip to the UK this year, they gave me their address which contained the name of
2 August 2019, 18:00 PM
Our Debt of Gratitude to Abdul Quadir
Abdul Quadir (1906-84) was a poet-prosodist, essayist, editor, journalist, literary critic, bibliophile and collector of literary works. He
8 March 2019, 18:00 PM
Critical Reception: A Comparison between Rokeya and Woolf
In a previous article titled “Rokeya and Woolf: Souls That Have Lived” (Daily Star, 8 Dec 2018), I discussed similarities and differences between Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
11 January 2019, 18:00 PM
Rokeya and Woolf: Souls that Have Lived
There are some amazing similarities between the Bengali writer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) and her English counterpart Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) that will make you wonder whether every great soul that has ever lived experiences the same dimension of reality in different shapes.
7 December 2018, 18:00 PM
The Bluestocking Salons of Eighteenth-Century Britain
I enjoyed reading my teacher and mentor Fakrul Alam's “The Literary Club of 18th-Century London” (Daily Star, 20 August 2018). Referring to our age-old practice of having literary addas (chatting circles) and London's “The Club” better known as “Literary Club” which Samuel Johnson (1709-84) and Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) founded in 1764, he pointed to a comparable literary tradition of Bengal and Britain.
28 September 2018, 18:00 PM
Rokeya's wake-up call to women
In her writing, she makes it clear that men, who have denied women equal opportunities, should take a greater role in establishing gender justice.
8 December 2016, 18:00 PM
The Essential Rokeya
In Bangladesh, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 – 1932) is highly regarded as a literary, cultural icon and reformist writer who
31 May 2015, 18:00 PM