Dohra Ahmad loves teaching at St. John’s University, which she
has been doing since 2004. She received her Ph. D. from Columbia
University that year and previously attended Yale University (B.A.)
and Hunter College High School. At St. John’s she teaches
undergraduate and graduate courses in twentieth-century
postcolonial and world Anglophone literature, postcolonial theory,
American and ethnic American literature, and utopian fiction.
Dr. Ahmad also serves as an advisor for faculty members who teach
English 1100C (Literature in a Global Context) as well as
frequently teaching the course herself.
Her research aims to draw thematic, stylistic, and historical
connections among various twentieth-century literary
movements. She is the author of Landscapes of Hope:
Anti-Colonial Utopianism in the United States (Oxford
University Press, 2009) and editor of Rotten English: A
Literary Anthology (W. W. Norton, 2007). Her essays have
appeared in ELH, the Yale Journal of Criticism, Social
Text, and the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She
has given invited lectures on postcolonial literature, vernacular
literature, and pedagogy at New York University, the University of
Pittsburgh, and CUNY. In her spare time she likes to lounge around,
do arts and crafts projects with her two daughters, and volunteer
at P.S. 261 in Brooklyn.