Saba Pakdel
Sessional lecturer
English
- Contact:
- spakdel@uvic.ca
- Credentials:
- BA (IAU), MA (IAU), MA (SFU)
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Migration studies and theory, migration literature, memoir, modernism, contemporary migrant figure, the crisis of displacement; borders, refugees, immigration, exile, identity crisis, language, memory
Saba Pakdel is a poet, modernist scholar, and PhD student in the English department at University of Victoria. She completed her BA and MA in English language and literature in Iran. She earned her second MA in English at Simon Fraser University in 2021.
Saba has attended and coordinated literary workshops and poetry readings; published poems, translations, and essays; and collaborated in stage plays as a playwright and backstage filmmaker. For a while, she worked as an editorial assistant at Talonbooks Publishing in Vancouver. Photography is her occasional and non-verbal means of communication with the world.
Saba specializes in migration studies and contemporary literature with a focus on exile, refugee, and immigration problems, particularly in works of migrant authors from the Middle East and Maghreb. Her research addresses the identity formation of migrants away from Euro-centric formulations based in twentieth century ideas about migration, largely derived from post-WWII circumstances, toward a contemporary reckoning with experiences of migration.