Writings About Kashmir Illuminating the Labyrinthine Region

Any attempt to homogenize Kashmiri society or the politico-cultural discourse on Kashmir is a dangerously flawed exercise. To that end, the chapters in this book address various aspects of the political, cultural, and socioeconomic life in Kashmir. Thesechapters are interdisciplinary interventions that could potentially bridge ethnic, religiocultural, and political divides in the region. The book is divided into three sections: the first section explores history and memory, offering a critical dialogue between these phenomena and fiction. Thechapters in section two offer a critical dialogue between history, politics, and gender, analyzing historical and political discourses to underscore the agential capacities of Kashmiri women, which are, traditionally, subsumed within masculinist discourse. The solechapter in section three foregrounds the complex relationship between history, trauma, and poetry. Taken together, this book is a nuanced attempt at giving readers the opportunity to engage with multiple subjectivities, historical understandings, and political opinions. It will be of interest to general readers, scholars, and advanced students of Literature, Politics, History, Human Geography and Sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of the South Asian Review.

1. Introduction Nyla Ali Khan Section 1: History, Memory, and Fiction: A Critical Dialogue 2. Mapping the Claims of History and Memory in Theorizing of the Kashmir Question Sana Shah 3. Excrement and Waste: Examining the Ramifications of the Municipal Infrastructures and the Problem of Global Eco-Cosmopolitism in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir Zachary Vincent Bordas Section 2: History, Gender, and Politics: A Critical Dialogue 4. "Dancing Naked": Gender, Trauma and Politics in the Mystical Poetry of Lal Ded Abir Bazaz 5. Women, Morality and Law: Prostitution in Kashmir Sana Kochak 6. Women Negotiating Public Sphere in Conflict-Ridden Kashmir: A Case of Sacred-Sites Zohra Batul 7. Freda Bedi Looking "From a Woman’s Window" on Kashmir Andrew Whitehead Section 3: History, Trauma, and Poetry: A Complex Relationship 8. Poets of Circumstances: Love, Trauma and Death in Digital Poetry Veena Mani

Nyla Ali Khan teaches at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), USA. She has also taught as Visiting Professor at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA. Formerly, she was Professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, USA. She received her PhD in English Literature and her Masters in Postcolonial Literature and Theory at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA. Dr Nyla Ali Khan is the author of several published articles, book reviews, and editorials. She has editedParchment of Kashmir,a collection of essays on Jammu and Kashmir, writtenfive books, includingEducational Strategies for Youth Empowerment in Conflict Zones: Transforming, Not Transmitting, Trauma; The Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism;andIslam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between Indian and Pakistan. Several of her articles have appeared in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines in the United States and South Asia.