Aqsa Ijaz

Aqsa Ijaz is an essayist, musician, translator, and teaches courses in Persian, Punjabi and Urdu languages at the Department of Language Studies, as well as a popular course, Being Human in South Asia in the Department of Historical Studies at University of Toronto Mississauga. She is a literary scholar with a demonstrated interest in multilingualism, linguistics, and cultural studies and her work covers a vast range of texts, from  premodern manuscript traditions, oral performances, and lithographs to modern graphic novel. 

Her current research focuses on the reception of classical Persian narrative poetry in premodern South Asia and her upcoming monograph, entitled Shaping the Language of Love: The Afterlife of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khusrau u Shirin in Hindustan, investigates the multiple models of love and desire in the Urdu, Persian, and Punjabi reception of the twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami of Ganjeh and theorises the role of multilingual  retellings in ensuring the continued resonance of his widely celebrated love poem Ḳhusrau u Shīrīn in medieval, early modern, and colonial periods.

Aqsa is also one of the architects for the Global Past Research Initiative at the Department of Historical Studies and is helping to shape and materialize the vision of this international call to action for a new model of humanistic education. She is also committed to sharing academic knowledge with the world outside of the university and for that she serves on the editorial board of The Marginalia Review of Books. Her recent work includes the publication of her English translation (in collaboration) of the award-winning French graphic novel, Majnun and Laila: Songs from Beyond the Grave, and more recently an annotated English translation of the 18th century Persian history of Sindh, entitled The Gift of the Generous. In her spare time, you’ll find her tucked neatly behind her cello practicing away.

Current Courses

Fall/Winter 2024-25:

• PRS210 (Introductory Persian I)
• PRS211 (Introductory Persian II)
• PUN212 (Introductory Punjabi)
• SAH200 (Being Human in South Asia)

Education

• PhD, Islamic Studies, McGill University
• MPhil, Translation Studies and Comparative Literature, G.C. University (Pakistan)
• BA Hons, English Literature and Philosophy (minor in French), G.C. University (Pakistan)

Areas of Teaching and Research Interests

• Persianate literatures
• Intellectual history
• Translation
• Urdu
• Punjabi

Selected Publications

• “Beyond the Imitation: Reconstructing the Hermeneutic Dimension of Niz̤āmī’s Ḳhusrau u Shīrīn in Hindustan” Postmedieval: journal of medieval cultural studies, issue 2024.
• Ijaz, Aqsa. "On the Wisdom of Love." Micro-Edition of Amir Khusrau’s “dar fazīlat-e-ishq” translated and introduced for Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing, issue Spring 2023.
• Ijaz, Aqsa. “Shaping the Language of Love: The Afterlife of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khusrau ū Shirin in Persianate India.” Comparative Practices in the Premodern Islamic World(s), edited by Huda Fakhreddin, David Larsen, and Hany Rashwan, jointly published by the Oxford University Press and the British Academy, May 2022.
• Ijaz, Aqsa. “Reading Nizāmī in Hindustān: The Death-Defying Poetics of Urdu masnavī.” Journal of Urdu Studies, issue 2022.
• Ijaz, Aqsa. “Spiritual Bridges: Across Time and Space.” Review Essay on Of Bridges: A Poetic and Philosophic Account by Thomas Harrison. Marginalia Review of Books (January 2022).
• Ijaz, Aqsa. “Reading Between the Postcolonial and Transcultural in Mirza Athar Baig’s Ghulam Bagh." Pakistan: Alternative Imaginings of a Nation-State, edited by Jürgen Schaflechner, Christina Oesterheld, and Ayesha Asif, Pakistan, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg and Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 46–71.
• Ijaz, Aqsa. “Storytelling in Indo-Persian Literary Traditions.” Review Essay of The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu by Pasha M. Khan and Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination by Tony K. Stewart. Marginalia Review of Books (April 2020).