The Gurmani Centre for Languages and Literature is delighted to invite you to the book launch ceremony for The Handbook of Mirza Ghalib's Poetry and Poetics: Commentaries and Contemporary Concerns by Dr. Tariq Rehman.  Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869) is celebrated as one of the greatest classical poets of Urdu of all time. Dr. Rehman’s magnum opus offers a detailed and accessible commentary on Ghalib’s poetry, contextualizing it within both his historical period and contemporary relevance. The book invites readers to explore Ghalib's couplets alongside the rich tradition of the ghaẓal, a form of Islamicate poetry found across Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu literary cultures. It also presents an alternative perspective on understanding Islamicate civilizational values and its interdisciplinary connections to contemporary literary theory, linguistics, and historical sociology, serving as both a social and literary guide to Indo-Islamicate culture, pre-Islamic Iranian influences, and local folk Indian Islam.

The event will feature Dr. Tariq Rehman, along with panelists Dr. Anjum Altaf and Dr. Nasir Abbas Nayyar. The session will be moderated by Aneeqa Mazhar Wattoo, taking place from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM on Thursday, September 26, 2024. We warmly welcome you to join us!

Dr Tariq Rehman: Dr. Tariq Rehman holds two doctoral degrees: a Ph.D. (1985) and a D.Litt. (2014) from the University of Sheffield. Notably, he was the first Pakistani to receive the Humboldt Research Award, one of Germany's highest honors for academic research. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Pride of Performance by the President of Pakistan in 2004 and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2013. Dr. Rehman is a Salzburg Seminar fellow (2017) and a member of the Common Room at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He has served as a visiting fellow at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and held the Pakistan Chair at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired as Director of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University and currently has also served as the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

Dr Anjum Altaf: Dr. Anjum Altaf is a member of the International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan (ICERP), who obtained MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmad Faiz (2019), More Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmad Faiz (2021), and co-author (with Amit Basole) of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation (2021).

Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyar: Dr. Nasir Abbas Nayyar is a distinguished critic and fiction writer in Urdu literature. He has served as a professor at the Institute of Urdu Language and Literature, Punjab University, Lahore. He was also the Director General of the Urdu Science Board in Lahore. Since 2020, he has been the editor of the research journal Bunyād at the Gurmani Center for Languages and Literature, LUMS. He initiated the discourse on Postcolonialism in Urdu, and his first comprehensive book on this topic, titled Māba’d Nau Ābādīāt: Urdu ke Tanāẑur Meiṅ was published in 2013. His book, Urdū Ādab kī Tashkīl-i Jadīd has won awards twice on this subject. For several years, he has been regularly writing about literary issues in the English newspapers Dawn and The News. His other publications include Nayē Naqād kē Nām Khatūt (2023), Khāk kī Mehak (2016), Farishta Nahiṅ Āyā (2017) and Rākh sē Likhī gaī Kitāb (2018). He regularly writes on literary issues in The News and occasionally in Dawn. 

Aneeqa Mazhar Wattoo: Aneeqa Mazhar Wattoo is a writer and translator based in Lahore, Pakistan. She was awarded the Sir Anwar Pervez-University of Oxford Graduate Scholarship to pursue an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Her current research explores the intersection between gender and the politics of spaces in Pakistan. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Meridian, McNeese Review, New Ohio Review and Southern Humanities Review amongst others. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founder of The Creative Room, Pakistan’s first interdisciplinary humanities platform for online learning focussed on South Asia.