In her role as Chair, Dr. Raza facilitated a dynamic and engaging dialogue featuring prominent panelists Mr. Shahid Nadeem, a renowned playwright and activist, and Dr. Shahzaib Khan, a respected academic and researcher. The panel delved into the power of literary storytelling as a means of confronting societal taboos, challenging oppressive structures, and promoting inclusive discourse. The conversation underscored the transformative role of literature in fostering empathy and cultural awareness.
The session also included the presentation of three scholarly papers. Riffat Rasheed (Gulberg College Lahore) presented “Rewriting Womanhood: New Narratives of Resilience and Empowerment in the Contemporary Fiction of Maniza Naqvi.” Dr. Umma Abubakar (Bayero University, Kano) offered a feminist reading in “Silence and the Relentless Desire to Speak: A Feminist Reading of the Female Dilemma in Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman.”
Maryam Tariq (University of Education Lahore) delivered her comparative study, “Indigenous Feminism in Postcolonial South Asia and Africa: Resilience, Resistance, and Reclamation of Identity Through Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala and Mumtaz Shahnawaz’s The Heart Divided.” Together, these contributions highlighted the ways in which literature becomes a site of resistance, identity reclamation, and empowerment across global contexts.
