Azfar Hussain

Dr Azfar Hussain is director of the graduate programme in social innovation and professor of integrative/interdisciplinary studies at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, US. He is also summer distinguished professor of English and Humanities at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) and vice-president of US-based Global Center for Advanced Studies.

Interrogating power, envisioning emancipation

His work does not merely interpret the world; it is involved in the struggle to change it.

1m ago

Language, land, labour, and liberation: Reclaiming the radical roots of Ekushey

Every time the question of language surfaces it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore.

5m ago

Beyond martyrdom and momentum: The matrix of the 1969 mass movement

In the history of Bangladesh’s formation and its war against the military-bureaucratic regime of Pakistan, the 1969 mass uprising is a significant milestone.

6m ago

Uprising, unity, and uncertainty: Power, protest, and politics in 2024

To speak of politics in 2024 is also to recall the entire history of political culture that has unfolded in Bangladesh since 1972.

7m ago

Our Victory Day and the questions of equality, justice, and human dignity

Bangladesh's hard-won independence, achieved through the Liberation War in 1971, remains the most defining political event in our history.

7m ago

Fakir Lalon Shah: Subjects, sites, and signs

Lalon is an exemplary anti-casteist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial figure in undivided Bengal in the19th century.

9m ago

89th Birthday of Serajul Islam Choudhury: Bangladesh’s premier public intellectual

Serajul Islam Choudhury is the author of more than a hundred books and numerous essays.

1y ago

Labour, Life, and Liberation: The Emancipatory Significance of May Day

May Day is customarily credited with originating in 1886 from the eight-hour workday movement in the United States, but the Polish-German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg provides a distinct perspective on its genesis.

1y ago
August 29, 2021
August 29, 2021

Kazi Nazrul Islam: Poetry, Politics, Praxis

The only major Bengali poet to have come from the rural proletariat and the first one to have raised—in public—the demand for the total independence of colonial India in 1922, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) enacts insurrectionary ruptures and breaks with certain old traditions in Bengali poetry while inaugurating new ones.

January 23, 2021
January 23, 2021

Kashinath Roy: A teacher, poet and mentor of extraordinary stature

My teacher Professor Kashinath Roy (1947—2021)—poet, short story writer, essayist—died on January 17, at 74. Or did he die?

December 19, 2020
December 19, 2020

Badruddin Umar: Our leading Marxist revolutionary

December 20 marks the 89th birthday of Badruddin Umar.

December 5, 2020
December 5, 2020

Remembering and Rereading Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis

December 09 marks both the birth and death anniversaries of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). The Rokeya Day in Bangladesh also falls on December 09. Indeed,

November 7, 2020
November 7, 2020

Fakir Lalon Shah: Subjects, Sites, and Signs

Fakir Lalon Shah—who orally composed thousands of songs in Bengali —died on October 17, 1890—on Kartik 01, 1297 (the Bengali year).

September 19, 2020
September 19, 2020

Mathematics and Poetry: Some Impressions

I think I’ve always loved mathematics in my own ways.

May 30, 2020
May 30, 2020

Nazrul’s Nonfiction Prose and the Question of Human Emancipation

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)—one of the greatest Bengali poets—has by now been fully assimilated into the literary canon and even into public discourse in Bangladesh.

January 18, 2020
January 18, 2020

Some Issues in Medieval Bangla Literature: Baru Chandidas and Vidyapati

It is undoubtedly a challenging task to characterize the world of medieval Bangla literature, given its rich diversity and staggering magnitude.

October 19, 2019
October 19, 2019

Jibanananda Das: Poetics, Politics, Political Economy

Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language. His poetry in particular has already made possible a staggering range of interpretive adventures and hermeneutic excavations, although he wrote 21 novels and 110 short stories that were discovered after his death.

August 11, 2019
August 11, 2019

Of Itching and Scratching

I, an itching palm? —William Shakespeare