Feryal Banday, Murray Edwards

Biographical Information

I am a first year PhD English Student at University of Cambridge, funded by Gates Cambridge trust and affliated with Murray Edwards college. Before coming to Cambridge, I did MA. English from Jamia Millia Islamia where I was a gold medalist, and I did my BA (hons) English from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

I was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Research Interests

In my PhD, I hope to look at the notorious process of landscaping Kashmir. Long known as a paradise on earth, foreigners have used landscape as a tool to establish a national symbology concurrent with their rule. My research interests, that I will be carrying out in the University of Cambridge, will focus on the vocabulary of landscapes as it is emerges in the cultural production emanating from the region, or in the words, produced by Kashmiri creators themselves. Keeping in mind the tendency of all nationalisms to homogenise marginalities and invisibilise hierarchies in the parent society, I will try to delineate the visual vocabularies of the resisting nationalism in Kashmir - what are the urban and rural landscapes they tend to show, and what are the various political struggles associated with it.

I want to make deeper enquiries into how the dynamics of caste, class, religion, ethnicities, and sexual orientation plays out in the articulation of a resisting nationalism in Kashmir. And probe for the possibilities for its broader, affective, non-uniform possibilities.

My broader research interests can comprised under postcolonial nationalisms, islam and the modern nation state, queer ecology and eco-criticism, visual cultures in conflict zones.

I am open to be emailed on any of the topics mentioned above for discussion or anything else. 

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed.

Banday, Feryal. Mourning Mothers and Tired Tropes: Unpacking Representations of Kashmiri Womanhood in Photographs. Women's Link, Jamia Millia Islamia, vol 23, Jan 2024.

Other Publications

Banday, Feryal. Rantas and Other Enslaving Bogeywomen: Muslim Girlhood in Kashmir. The Bastion, Nov 29, 2021.

Banday, Feryal. Snow: A Poem. The Alipore Post, Jan 22, 2022.