Mariyam Ilyas Siddiqui

Mariyam Ilyas Siddiqui is one of the founding members of School for life, UPES. She designed and led a life skill course titled ‘Learning How to Learn’. Her love and passion for teaching became her gateway into academia 3 years back. Prior to that, she completed her Ph.D. in English Literature from Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 2019. In her PhD research, she tried to look Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s notable works from a postcolonial lens. She worked on the Spanish to English translated works of the writer. In her current role, she is teaching courses on Postcolonial Studies (theory and literature), gender and science fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Realisms in Literature and Theatre Studies.

In addition to her role as a faculty, she is also playing the role of a Cluster Head of an Urbanization Cluster at School of Liberal Studies. In this role, she is leading a group of like-minded people who would identify issues pertaining to Urbanization and would eventually seek solutions to those issues.

Based on her relationship with students, she is also appointed as a Proctor for School of Liberal Studies, wherein she tries to maintain discipline and healthy student engagement at school.

In addition to teaching, Mariyam has an immense love for theatre as an art form. Throughout her college life, she was associated with the dramatics societies of her college and university. She has performed and received praise for her performance from stalwarts of theatre such as Tom Alter and Naseeruddin Shah. She has also given a couple of theatre workshops to the students at School of Liberal Studies.

Mariyam Ilyas Siddiqui started her career with UPES in 2020, soon after she completed her PhD in 2019. In the last 3 years of her work span at UPES, she has honed her teaching skills. In these years she has taught a variety of courses ranging from basic English language course, language labs, Human Rights, Life Skill courses Learning How to Learn and Critical Thinking and Writing, literature-specific courses, Postcolonial Literature, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Realisms in Literature and Theatre Studies.

Her doctoral thesis engaged with Latin American literature viz a viz Postcolonialism. She tried to analyse some of the notable works of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s works from the lens of postcolonial theory.

Her current research interest mainly lies in the field of science fiction in specific and popular culture in general. She is a huge science fiction fan and thus tries to engage critically with whatever she reads or watches of the genre.

Based on her experience as a student, she intends to offer her pool of knowledge and in return learn something herself. She believes, the role of an academic is not only to provide knowledge of what is written within the four lines of a book, but to also provide a holistic view of what could become of one, if one understands the meaning of those four written lines. She enters her classroom with only one aim, i.e. to share everything that she knows and understands about the subject. She tries to build connect between the text and the real world. She believes everyone sitting in a classroom should leave the room with something new that they had learnt. A classroom should not be merely four walls, but an open space, where students are eager to learn and educators are eager to share their experience of learning something new.

She has taught courses like Learning How to Learn, Critical Thinking and Writing, Living Conversations, English Language Labs, Human Rights and Responsibilities, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Realisms in Literature, Gender and Science Fiction and Theatre Studies.

She has presented her research work at various international conferences such as Indian Society for Theatre Research (ISTR), Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) and The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. She has published her research articles in various journals of international and national repute.

msiddiqui@ddn.upes.ac.in