Nasser Mufti

Nasser Mufti is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research focuses on 19th century British literature, critical theory, and postcolonial studies. He explores how narratives of civil war and nationalism shape imperial and decolonization processes. His work bridges literary analysis with political theory, examining how discourses of community and rupture influence historical transitions.

He is the author of Civilizing War: Imperial Politics and the Poetics of National Rupture (2018), which won the 2019 Gustave O. Arlt Award and was a runner-up for the 2020 Sonya Rudikoff First Book Prize. Current research projects include Britain’s Nineteenth Century, 1963-4, analyzing postcolonial engagements with British literature, and Colonia Moralia, comparing T.W. Adorno and V.S. Naipaul’s postcolonial Enlightenment critiques.

• Awards: 2019 Gustave O. Arlt Award, 2020 Sonya Rudikoff First Book Prize (Runner-Up)
• Publications: The Journal of Narrative Theory, Nineteenth Century Literature, Victorian Studies, and Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum.

His work interrogates how colonial and postcolonial thinkers reinterpreted British literary traditions to theorize decolonization, framing these as intellectual “fields of intelligibility” rather than passive colonial legacies. He teaches courses on modernism, postcolonial literature, and critical theory.