معرفی
Zakir Paul is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University (NYU), with additional affiliations as Associate Faculty in the Department of English and the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture. He holds joint ties to NYU’s College of Arts & Science, Liberal Studies program, and the Graduate School of Arts & Science. His research bridges 19th to 21st century literary studies, focusing on modernist comparisons across English, French, and German traditions, alongside critical theory and aesthetics.
Education includes a B.A. from Northwestern University, an M.A. from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III), and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, all in Comparative Literature. Prior to NYU, he taught at UW-Madison, the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in France as a 'lecteur d’anglais.'
Central research interests involve transformations in concepts of intelligence in early 20th-century French thought, with engagements in translation studies, Nietzsche’s theories of translation, and interdisciplinary aesthetics. Current projects explore impersonality, the third person in literature, and topics like Henri Michaux’s mescaline studies and Jay Leyda’s avant-garde montage techniques.
His scholarly contributions include Disarming Intelligence (Princeton UP, 2024), editorial work in SubStance, Textual Practice, and the Yearbook of Comparative Literature, and translations of Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Rancière. Research grants have been awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fondation des Treilles.
Teaching spans undergraduate courses like 'Poetics of Intelligence' and graduate seminars such as 'Problems in Aesthetics from Kant to Rancière.' His work emphasizes relational modes in literature, crisis and critique in comparative frameworks, and transnational intellectual histories.
