Dr. Mohammed Muharram (Wiss. Mitarbeiter)

Dr. Mohammed Muharram

Büro: GW 2, B 3.180
Telefon: +49 (0)421 218-68143
Sprechzeiten: Nach Vereinbarung
Email: muharramprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de

Personal

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 Associate 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 The Bloomsbury 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

Book Chapter Muharram, Mohammed. “Challenging Marginalization in the Western Publishing Industry: The Participation of Postcolonial Arabic Fiction via Tayeb Saleh's Season of Migration to the North.” In Postcolonial Participation: Literature, Culture, and Identity, edited by Miriam Hinz and Christina Slopek-Hauf. Routledge, 2026. https://www.routledge.com/Participation-in-Postcolonial-Worlds-Literatures-for-on-or-against-the-Global-Literary-Market/Slopek-Hauff-Hinz/p/book/9781041067870
Journal Article Muharram, Mohammed. “What Are/Is the Blue Humanities? Towards a New Epistemic Horizon in the Study of Water, Politics, and Culture.” Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research: Humanities and Social Sciences Edition 2, no. 1 (2026): 10–24. https://aquja.alquds.edu/index.php/arts/article/view/355(The First peer-reviewed Arabic-language article introducing the field of Blue Humanities.)
Book Review Muharram, Mohammed. “When Seasons Break: Literature in an Unseasonable Age.” Review of Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures (2024). H-Net Reviews, January 2026. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=62650
Magazine Article Muharram, Mohammed. “Currents of Memory: East African Coastal Lives in a Warming Indian Ocean.” SeaVoice (UNESCO-supported special issue), no. 8, 2026. https://www.seavoice.org/articles/currents-of-memory

Edited Volumes

(Co-Edited Volume) — The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities. Co-editors: Mohammed Muharram, Steve Mentz, Serpil Oppermann, and Sandra Young. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsbury-handbook-to-the-blue-humanities-9781350450707/

In-Press Book Chapters and Journal Articles

Muharram, Mohammed. "Blue Postcolonialism" (with Kerstin Knopf). In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities. Bloomsbury.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Blue Humanities." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. Oxford University Press.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Centring Peripheries, Transcending Boundaries through the Blue Humanities: Arab Australian Oceanic Encounters in Fiction on Yemen." In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Oceanic Encounters through History. Palgrave Macmillan.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Memory Studies and the Blue Humanities: The Mediterranean as a Narrative Nexus in Syrian and Yemeni Diaspora's Transmedia (Post)Digital Storytelling." In Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century: Transmedial Passages in Postdigital Times, edited by Julia Borst and Linda Maeding. Brill (Open Access).
Muharram, Mohammed. "Re-Imagining Arab American Studies from a Blue Humanities Perspective: Yemeni Sailors as a Case Study." In Re-Imagining Arab American Studies. University of Texas Press.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Blue Humanities Meets Artificial Intelligence (AI): Water Narratives of Climate Change in the Age of ChatGPT." In Transdisciplinary Approaches to Blue Humanities, edited by Nikoleta Zampaki, Helena Belchior-Rocha, Michael Briguglio, Peggy Karpouzou, and Gaetano Sabato. Bloomsbury.
Muharram, Mohammed. "When Land Meets Sea: Green and Blue Humanities Perspectives on Eco-Diaspora and Environmental Memory in Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies." Chapter submitted for Green Humanities: Eco-Diaspora, Indigenous Resilience & Literary Cartographies. Authorspress.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Beyond Conflict Narratives: Rethinking Iran–Arab Relations Through Blue Humanities." Siyasat Arabiya, a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal of political science and international relations, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Blue Postcolonialism in Education: Rethinking Borders, Race, and Curricula." Special issue"Extra-Territorial Borders," Oxford Intersections (Oxford University Press). Editor: Franck Bille.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Readings of the Representation of Childhood and Memory in the Yemen War through the Blue Humanities." Tamer Foundation's journal Tayf (Language: Arabic).
Muharram, Mohammed. "Two Futures for Alexandria: Blue Humanities, Climate Displacement, and Arabic Climate Fiction." Special issue of Public Humanities, Cambridge University Press.

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

Selected Publications

Muharram, Mohammed. “Making the Invisible Visible: How the Blue Humanities Translate Climate Change to the Public.” Public Humanities 1 (2025): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2025.10046.
Muharram, Mohammed. "Teaching the Blue Humanities: Sources, Strategies, and Challenges." In Towards ‘Bluer’ Humanities: Oceanic Meditations in Art, Literature and Culture, edited by Razeena P. R. and Sheeba M. K., 23–41. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2024.
https://www.amazon.in/Towards-Bluer-Humanities-Meditations-Literature/dp/B0DP2NXLY1.
Muharram, Mohammed. 2025. Review of Hydrofeminist Thinking with Oceans: Political and Scholarly Possibilities, edited by Tamara Shefer, Vivienne Bozalek, and Nike Romano, London, Routledge, 2024, 214 Pp., £38.99 (Paperback), ISBN 9781032408996; £145.00 (Hardcover), ISBN 9781032408972.” Social & Cultural Geography, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2482301
Muharram, Mohammed. 2025. "An Exiled Yemeni Scholar in Western Academia: Perils and Promises". In Exiled Scholars in Western Academia: Refugees or Intellectuals? edited by Alfred Babo and Sayed Hussein Akhlaq. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 223-245. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-83775-3_9
The Arab Writes Back: History, Orientalism, and the Canon. LAP LAMBERT. 2022.
(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.
“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.
"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.
“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.
“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.
"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.
“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.
“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.
“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

(Book, Author): Situating Yemen in Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh University Press)
(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)
(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).
(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.
(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).
(Article) “Arabia Felix Revisited: Traces of Ecofeminism in Contemporary Yemeni Literature”. Modernist Feminist Studies (Routledge Taylor & Francis).