Dr. Mohammed Muharram

Dr. Mohammed Muharram is a visiting postdoctoral researcher of postcolonial studies and the blue humanities with specific reference to Arabic literature and culture.

After he got his PhD in 2012 in Anglophone postcolonial studies from the English and Foreign Languages University (Hyderabad, India), Dr. Muharram worked as an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Thamar University (Yemen) where he also chaired the English Department at the Faculty of Education and directed Thamar University English Language Center for Translation and TOEFL Preparation. He taught widely in many public and private universities in Yemen. He got a Harvard Certificate for an online seminar on World Literature. He also received two TESOL Certificates from Arizona State University.

Awards and Fellowships

Dr. Muharram’s postgraduate research has been funded by a number of local and international scholarships and fellowships from Yemen, India, USA, Malysia and Germany. From Yemen, he was awarded the Yemeni government scholarship for higher studies to pursue MA and PhD. From the government of India, Dr. Muharram received four awards: the Indian Council for Cultural Exchange (ICCR) to pursue MA, the University Grants Commission (UGC) Junior Fellowship and the UGC Senior Fellowship (during his PhD), and the UGC Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2019, Dr. Muharram received the Scholar Rescue Fund fellowship of the Institute of International Education (IIE-SRF) who arranged for him a position of a visiting Assistant Professor of English Literature at Philadelphia University, Amman, Jordan. In 2020, he was awarded the UKM Postdoctoral Fellowship in Malaysia under the IIE-SRF sponsorship, but the fellowship was not taken due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. In 2021, Dr. Muharram was awarded the prestigious Philipp Schwartz Initiative Fellowship sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany to work as a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen where he is currently based since then.

Teaching and Research Interests

In addition to research in the Blue Humanities, Dr. Muharram teaches at the University of Bremen the courses “Narratives of Ocean Cultures” and “Narratives of Sea Migration”. Interested in interdisciplinary and holistic approach in research, Dr. Muharram is an associate member of Fiction Meets Science (Bremen-Oldenburg), Science-Humanities Initiative (Cardiff University, UK), Environmental Justice Humanities (Kiel), and Oceanic Humanities for the Global South. He is also a member of the University in Exile Consortium, Academic in Solidarity, and Academics in Exile.

Dr. Muharram has published extensively in Arab postcolonial studies. His book The Arab Writes Back: Orientalism, History, and the Canon (2021) and article which appeared in the Minnesota Review critique the marginalization of Arabic fiction in seminal postcolonial textbooks and anthologies. Dr. Muharram has also published several scholarly articles on decolonizing Arab and Muslim mind, the clash of civilizations, and Occidentalism. He is currently writing Situating Yemen in Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh University Press). His current work on postcolonial environmental humanities includes articles and chapters on Arabic blue humanities that deal with issues of migration, exile, ecofeminism, Yemen-Australian oceanic encounters, and the role of Yemeni Hadhramis in connecting Indian Ocean cultures.

Dr. Muharram coined the term ‘Blue Postcolonialism’ at an international postcolonial conference organized by GAPS (the Postcolonial Studies Association) at the University of Constance. He is co-editing TheBloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities with three co-editors: Prof. Steve Mentz, the scholar from St. John’s University, New York City, who coined the term ‘blue humanities’; Prof. Serpil Oppermann (Cappadocia University, Turkey), who recently published Blue Humanities (Cambridge University Press); and Prof. Sandra Young (University of Cape Town, South Africa). On his Twitter page, Dr. Muharram regularly shares the most up to date scholarship in the field of the Blue Humanities, postcolonial studies, and Arabic literature and culture.

On Monday 18 March 2024, the Middle East Studies Department at the University of Southern California, the USA, hosted Dr. Muharram to give a lecture on "Re-thinking with Water: The Blue Humanities and Middle East Studies". The lecture was about the possible intersections between Middle East studies and the Blue Humanities, with more focus on what would the Middle East history look like if we immerse it in water ("Oceanic Middle East / Global Middle East"). Dr Muharram argued that interconnectedness and centering the marginalized histories of maritime Arab cultures (such as the Yemeni coffee, the Hadrami diaspora, etc) are benefits of such immersion. The lecture also engaged with what would politics mean in the Middle East from an oceanic perspective, and how the blue humanities could deal with the problem of water scarcity in the region from multiple perspectives. The lecture ended with a presentation of how water is portrayed in some Arabic works of literature and culture.

Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Global Academy Talk (youtube.com)

Re-thinking with Water: The Blue Humanities and Middle East Studies - MESA Global Academy

Below are links to selected publications, research in progress, and social media pages.

Selected Publications

1. The Arab Writes Back: History, Orientalism, and the Canon. LAP LAMBERT. 2022.
2. (with Areen Khalifeh) “Writing Back to the Self: Leila Aboulela’s Minaret and Fadia Faqir’s My Name Is Salma.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 62, no. 3, 2021, pp. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2021.1948385.
3. “The Marginalization of Arabic Fiction in the Postcolonial and World English Curriculum: Slips? Or Orientalism and Racism?” Minnesota Review 78.1 (2012): 130-145. Project MUSE. Web. (Duke University Press) https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478955. 2012.
4. "Linguistic Representationability of the Self and the Other: Can the Arab Speak?" GAI International Academic Conference Proceedings, Online (USA), Global Academic Institute, 1.1 (2020): 5-21. https://www.globalacademicinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/v1_n1_2020_turkey.pdf.
5. “Contemporary Dangers of Huntington's Travesty of ‘History’: A Postcolonial Deconstructionist Response and Proposed Solution”. Faculty of Arts Journal (Thamar University), 13 (2019): 28-46. https://www.tu.edu.ye/journals/index.php/arts/article/view/231 . 2019.
6. “Decolonizing the Arab-Muslim Mind: A Call for a Postcolonial Provincializing Response to Modernity.” The National University Journal 9 (2019): 45-54. https://national-univ.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Decolonizing-the-Arab-Muslim-Mind-A-Call-for-a-Postcolonial-Provincializing-Response-to-Modernity-MOHAMMED-ABDULLAH-HUSSEIN-MUHARRAM10.pdf. 2019.
7. "Challenging the Center: Writing Back to the Canon with Specific Reference to Tayeb Saleh’s Season of Migration to the North and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness." The Yemen Academy Journal 1.1 (2018): 198-208. tinyurl.com/4hvaskmw. 2018.
8. “Beyond the ‘misleading’ Google: An Annotated Compilation of ‘Hidden’ Academic Databases for Language Research Writers.” The National University Journal 5 (2017): 283-296. http://national-univ.net/uni/uploads/13.pdf. 2017.
9. “Occidentalism/ Orientalism in Reverse: The West in the Eyes of Modern Arab Intellectuals.” JAST (Journal of American Studies in Turkey) 39 (2014): 31-55.http://www.asat-jast.org/images/JAST-ISSUES/JAST-39/05_muharram.pdf . 2014.
10. “Resisting the Epistemic Violence of Orientalist Translation: Defining 'Arab' from an Arab Perspective.” Middle East Panorama 1.1 (2011): 59-71. Print. 2011.

Under Review

1. (Book, Co-editor): The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities
2. (Book, Author): Situating Yemen in Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh University Press)
3. (chapter): “Narratives in the Blue Humanities: Intersecting Tides of Postcolonial and Maritime Ecofeminism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Handbook of Postcolonial Ecofeminist Literature (Palgrave Macmillan)
4. (Chapter) “Teaching the Blue Humanities” in Toward Bluer Humanities: Oceanic Meditations in Art, Literature and Culture (Oxford University Press India).
5. (Chapter) “An Exiled Yemeni Scholar in Western Academia: Perils and Promises” in Exiled Scholars in Western Academia: Refugees or Intellectuals? (Liverpool University Press) (Migrations and Identities Series).
6. (Chapter) “Centering the Peripheries, Transcending Boundaries: Arab-Australian Oceanic Encounters through the Comparative Lens of Fiction on Yemen” in Spheres of Interaction: A Handbook of Global Oceanic Encounters (Palgrave Macmillan).
7. (Chapter) “Unveiling the Unseen in the Publishing Industry: The Potential of Postcolonial Arabic Fiction in a Western-Dominated Literary Sphere” for a Bloomsbury collection under the series Literature, Culture and Identity.
8. (Article) “Post-Apocalyptic Survival in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven” in Coming to Terms with a Crisis: Cultural Engagements with COVID-19 (Columbia University Press).
9. (Article) “Arabia Felix Revisited: Traces of Ecofeminism in Contemporary Yemeni Literature”. Modernist Feminist Studies (Routledge Taylor & Francis).

Twitter: @mohamedmuharram

Academia: https://bremen.academia.edu/DrMohammedMuharram

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-mohammed-muharram-1b909018/

MESA Global Adademy: https://mesaglobalacademy.org/scholar-profiles/mohammed-muharram/

Interview: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45286