Content Details | NUML Online Research Repository

Title TRACING CONTESTED TERRITORIES IN PROTEST POETRY: A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED PROTEST POETS

Author(s) Samia Inam

Abstract Title: Tracing Contested Territories in Protest Poetry: A Cultural Analysis of Selected Protest Poets. This dissertation examines protest poetry as a transformative medium of resistance and cultural preservation in contested territories, focusing on the works of Esther Belin (Diné/Navajo), Agha Shahid Ali (Kashmiri), and Mohammed El Kurd (Palestinian). Through a cultural analysis framework integrating concepts of urban palimpsests, decoloniality, and the aesthetic regime of politics, the study looks at how protest poetry transcends literary boundaries to reclaim spatial, historical, and cultural sovereignty in the face of colonial erasure. By analyzing Belin’s Of Cartography (2017), Ali’s The Country Without a Post Office (1997), and El Kurd’s Rifqa (2021), the research reveals how these poets deploy Indigenous cosmologies, intertextuality, and digital activism to subvert oppressive narratives. Belin’s typographical experimentation with Navajo landscape and Dine Bizaad (Navajo language) challenges settler-colonial infrastructures, while Ali’s cultural mapping of Srinagar’s palimpsestic history counters Indian occupation. El Kurd’s fusion of social media documentation with verse disrupts Zionist erasure of Palestinian memory, positioning poetry as both witness and weapon. The study bridges gaps in protest/resistance literature scholarship, which often overlooks Indigenous urbanity, poetics, and cross-regional solidarity. It demonstrates how protest poetry from contested regions redefines literary genres by merging oral traditions, spatial critique, and cultural memory, offering a counter-archive against state violence and cultural amnesia. By centering marginalized epistemologies, this research challenges Eurocentric literary traditions, affirming protest poetry as a vital, interdisciplinary force in global decolonial struggles.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2025-08-19

Subject

Publisher

Contributor(s)

Format

Identifier

Source

Relation

Coverage

Rights