Saba Pirzadeh is assistant professor of English and environmental literature. A Fulbright fellowship recipient, she completed her PhD in English (Theory and Cultural studies) and graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Purdue University. She has taught courses on introductory composition, literature and environment, young adult fiction, ecological disaster, Renaissance drama, Victorian novel, nineteenth and twentieth century American literature. Her scholarship is informed by postcolonial ecocritical perspective and examines conceptualization of anthropocentric violence, resource extraction, climate crisis, petroculture, territorial appropriation, hydropolitics, interspecies relationality and socioecological justice in literary narratives. Another research interest is based on popular culture and its articulation of the ideological and material realities of the postcolonial experience. Her work has received support from the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich) and Bucknell Humanities Center (Pennsylvania). She is currently part of the project "The Next Monsoon: Climate Change and Contemporary Cultural Production in South Asia" (NEH funded research led by Professor Ifthikar Dadi, Cornell University). She is also serving as an editorial board member of South Asia Research.
Peer-reviewed publications:
Saba Pirzadeh and Tehmina Pirzada. “Cinematic Empire and Nostalgia in Viceroy’s House and Victoria and Abdul.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Jan. 2022, doi:10.1177/00219894211066444.
“Popular Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene. Ed. John Parham. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 2021.
“Neoliberal Extraction and Aquatic Resistance in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2021.1886975
"Postcolonial Development, Socio-ecological Degradation and Slow Violence in Pakistani Fiction.” Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Ed. Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019.
“Topographies of Fear: War and Environmental Othering in Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator and Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 21.6 (2019): 892-907. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1558090
Saba Pirzadeh and Tehmina Pirzada. “Pakistani Popular Music: A Call to Reform in the Public Sphere.” South Asian Popular Culture 17.2 (2019): 197-211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2018.1512702
Saba Pirzadeh and Arielle McKee. “Arthurian Eco-conquest in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon.” Parergon 34.1 (2017): 1-24. doi:10.1353/pgn.2017.0000.
“Children of Ravaged Worlds: Exploring Environmentalism in Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Cameron Stracher's The Water Wars.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 22.2 (2015): 203-221. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isu143
“Persecution vs. Protection: Examining the Pernicious Politics of Environmental Conservation in The Hungry Tide.” South Asian Review 36.2 (2015): 107-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2015.11933020
Pirzadeh, S. & Pirzada, T. (2022). Cinematic empire and nostalgia in Viceroy's House and Victoria and Abdul. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, doi:10.1177/00219894211066444.
Pirzadeh, S. (2021). "Neoliberal extraction and aquatic resistance in Helon Habila's Oil on Water". Journal of Postcolonial Writing, doi:10.1080/17449855.2021.1886975.
Pirzadeh, S. (2019). Topographies of Fear: War and Environmental Othering in Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator and Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden. Interventions, 21 (6), 892-907.
Pirzadeh, S. & Pirzada, T. (2018). "Pakistani Popular Music: A Call to Reform in the Public Sphere". South Asian Popular Culture, doi:10.1080/14746689.2018.1512702.
Pirzadeh, S. & McKee, A. (2017). "Arthurian Eco-conquest in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and La?amon.". Parergon, 34 (1), 1-24, doi:10.1353/pgn.2017.0000.
Pirzadeh, S. (2015). "Children of Ravaged Worlds: Exploring Environmentalism in Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Cameron Stracher's The Water Wars.". ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 22 (2), 203-221, doi:10.1093/isle/isu143.
Pirzadeh, S. (2015). "Persecution vs. Protection: Examining the Pernicious Politics of Environmental Conservation in The Hungry Tide.". South Asian Review, 36 (2), 107-120, doi:10.1080/02759527.2015.11933020.
Pirzadeh, S. (2021). Popular Fiction, Published. John Parham (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene, Cambridge University Press.
Pirzadeh, S. (2019). Postcolonial Development, Socio-ecological Degradation and Slow Violence in Pakistani Fiction, Published. Scott Slovic (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication, Routledge.
Pirzadeh, S. (2018). "Eco-dystopia and Agency in Young Adult Fiction". Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Pittsburgh, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2018). "Literary Waters, Petro-Violence and Ecological Ethics in Helon Habila's Oil on Water.". Center for Comparative Literature Annual Conference. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Pirzadeh, S. (2018). "Environmental Appropriation and Transnational Conflict in South Asian Fiction.". Questioning South Asia Conference, Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan.
Pirzadeh, S. (2018). "Climatic Catastrophe and Ecocritical Awakening in Ship Breaker and The Water Wars.". Ecomedia in the Anthropocene. Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) Conference. University of California, Santa Barbara, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2017). "Ethno-nationalist Violence and Spatial Occupation in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss.". DAKAM Conference on Violence Studies, Istanbul, Turkey.
Pirzadeh, S. (2017). "Pedagogical Reform and Humanities in Pakistan.". International Humanities Conference, Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan.
Pirzadeh, S. (2017). "Militarized Geography: War Legacies and Ecological Precarity in post 9/11 Afghanistan.". ASLE UKI/LAND 2 Conference, Sheffield, England.
Pirzadeh, S. (2016). "'No sir! Na janaab! Ehtesaab bas ehtesaab!': Pakistani Popular Music as Resistance.". South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, Austin, Texas, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2016). "Territorial Dominion and Natural Appropriation in Historia Regum Britanniae and Alliterative Morte Arthur.". Indiana Medieval Graduate Consortium 2016, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2015). "War and Re-imagined Landscape.". 4th Annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah, Georgia, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2014). "Environmental Othering in Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator and Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden.". South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 86th Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2014). "Marginalized Bodies and the Politics of Respectability in Shoaib Mansoor's Bol.". 43rd Annual Conference on South Asia., Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2014). "Strategic Visuality in Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton.". Early Atlantic Studies Colloquium. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2014). "Un-Naming the Environment: Disfixation of Representation in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide". Northeast Modern Language Association 2014 Convention, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2014). "Urban Space and Terroristic Simmerings: The City Remapped in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Uzma Aslam Khan's Trespassing.". South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference., Chicago, United States of America.
Pirzadeh, S. (2013). "We Voice as Stylistic Innovation in Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic.". Fifth Biannual Conference, Reception Study Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America.