Biography

Sara Kazmi is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a scholar, translator, and performer whose work takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of anticolonial, left, and oppositional literary production in the Global South. Sara focuses on the Panjab region, and more broadly, on South Asia and South Asian diasporas, combining methods in literary studies, performance, and history to focalise how marginal and vernacular writing engages planetary debates around questions of decolonisation, Marxism, and revolutionary transformation. In addition to her work as a scholar, Sara is a performer and student of Indian classical music. She blends ragas with folk tunes in renditions of protest music from South Asia, some of which are archived at mein.beqaid (I, uncaged) on Instagram. She also sits on the editorial committee for Jamhoor, a critical left media organization that amplifies marginalized and progressive voices from South Asia. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, Sara was a Postdoctoral Fellow at LUMS University in Lahore, Pakistan. She received a PhD in Criticism and Culture at the Department of English, University of Cambridge, an MA in South Asian History at SOAS, London, and a B.A. (Hons) in Humanities from LUMS University. Her academic work has appeared in the South Asia Multi-disciplinary Journal (SAMAJ), the Journal of Socialist Studies, and South Asia Chronicle, and literary criticism and long-form writing has been published by Herald, Dawn Books and Authors, The News on Sunday, and Poetry Birmingham, with translations in Jalada Africa and Pancham.

Previous Education

Lahore University of Management Sciences
School of Oriental and African Studies