Esra Mirze Santesso, associate professor of English at the University of Georgia, will deliver a lecture titled "Muslim Subjectivity and Border-Writing in Malik Sajad's Munnu" at 5 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 21, in Kimpel Hall 102.

Santesso describes her talk, which comes from her recent book, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023), as follows: 

Malik Sajad's Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir offers a coming-of-age story of a Muslim protagonist, growing up in Indian-occupied Srinagar alongside a number of Pakistani-backed insurgents. Employing a "visual grammar" that echoes Art Spiegelman's anthropomorphic use of animals in Maus, Sajad illustrates Kashmiris as hanguls, an endangered species of deer.

Focusing on the representation of the dehumanized Muslim subject occupying a space of exception, the talk raises questions about reading the comic as an example of "border writing"—what can be described as a regionally-conceived narrative that is territorialized, and depoliticized.

In the course of the graphic memoir written to explore Muslim border subjectivity, the protagonist embraces his role as a different kind of a witness, working against the necropolitical conditions that transform his city into a "death-world" and working towards recuperating Kashmir as a space of solidarity and a distinct site of cultural production.

This lecture is open to the public and sponsored by the German and Arabic Sections of the Department of World Languages, Literatures & Cultures; the Department of English; the Honors College; the Middle East Studies Program; and the Art History Program in the School of Art.