Email: choman.hardi [at] auis.edu.krd
Office: B-F2-03
Scholar, poet, and translator, Dr. Choman Hardi returned home to teach English and Gender Studies at AUIS after 26 years of living abroad. Her research and teaching interests include poetry, feminist literature, feminist literary criticism, gender and genocide, masculinity, symbolic reparation, and women’s activism. After completing her education in the UK, Hardi was awarded a post-doctoral scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust. The resulting book, 'Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq' (Routlege, 2011), was named a UK Core Title by the Yankee Book Peddler. She founded AUIS's Center for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) in 2015. Two years later, CGDS announced the establishment of the first interdisciplinary gender studies minor in Iraq.
Hardi's poetry has appeared in Poetry London, Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Washington Square Review, Exiled Ink, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her English collections were published by Bloodaxe Books. Four poems from her first collection, Life For Us (2004), were selected for the UK's English GCSE syllabus in 2010. Her second collection, Considering The Women (2015), received a Recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and was shortlisted for the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her translation of Sherko Bekas’s Butterfly Valley (Arc Publishing, 2018) won a PEN Translates Award.
Books
2018, Butterfly Valley, Arc Publications
2015, Considering the Women, Bloodaxe Books
2011, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq, Routledge
2004, Life for Us, Bloodaxe Books
Book Chapters
2018 "Gender and genocide; two case studies" in Routlege Handbook of Gender and Security. Caron E. Gentry, Laura J. Shepherd, and Laura Sjoberg (eds.) Routlege, UK
2011 "The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds: Chemical Weapons in the Service of Mass Murder" in: Forgotten Genocides, Essays on Oblivion, Denial and Memory. Rene Lemarchand (ed.) Pennsylvania University Press, Philadelphia/ USA
2006 "The Pleasure and Duty of Writing
" in: Writing Worlds 1, The Norwich Exchanges. Vesna Goldsworthy (ed.), Pen and Inc. Press, Norwich/ UK
2005 "Kurdish Women Refugees: Obstacles and Opportunities
" in: Forced Migration and Mental Health, rethinking the care of refugees and displaced persons. David Ingleby (ed.)
, Springer Science + Business Media, New York/ USA
Articles
2018 "We Will not be Bystanders, a Poetry Manifesto" in: The Poetry Review, 108:1
2011 "Women’s Activism in Iraqi Kurdistan: Achievements, Shortcomings and Obstacles" in: Kurdish Studies Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1
2005 "Switching Languages"
in: Between the Languages – Modern Poetry in Translation, Short Run Press, Exeter/ UK
Awards and Fellowships
2017, Service Award, AUIS, Iraq
2017, PEN Translates Award, English PEN, London, UK
2016, Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship, Beyond Borders, Edinburgh
2016, The Forward Prize Best Collection Shortlist, Forward Arts Foundation, UK
2016, Excellence Award for Undergraduate Faculty Research, AUIS, Kurdistan- Iraq
2014, The Woman’s Award, Andesha Cultural Centre, Kurdistan- Iraq
2014, “Summer Roof” as one of the “50 greatest modern love poems of the past 50 years”, The South Bank Centre, UK
2011, Gendered Experiences of Genocide as a UK Core Title, Yankee Book Peddler, New Hampshire, USA
2005, Study Abroad Scholarship, The Leverhulme Trust, London
2002, Jerwood- Arvon Young Writers Apprenticeship, Arvon Foundation, UK
2001, PhD Scholarship, The Tizard Center, University of Kent in Canterbury
Interviews and Podcasts
2018, Radio New Zealand
2018, #WhereToNow? Auckland Writers Festival
2016, BBC World Service
2015, BBC Radio 4, Front Row
2015, BBC World Service
2013, BBC World Service
2009, The Poetry Archive
2004, BBC World Service