Lunch & Learn with Aisha Dad
Through the Looking Glass: The Narrative Performance of Anarkali
• Free Online Event
• Thursday, March 26, 2026
• 12:30–1:30 p.m. ET
• Online via Zoom
Join the New Alexandria Foundation for a lively conversation with Aisha Dad, author of Through the Looking Glass: The Narrative Performance of Anarkali. In this session, Dad explores how Anarkali’s narrative lives through performance and re-performance across architecture, travel writing, theater, and film — and invites us to think together about what it means for a story to become “real” through the ways it is told.
What to Expect
This is not a formal lecture — it’s a guided conversation with plenty of time for your questions.
About Through the Looking Glass
The story of Anarkali is essentially about the potency of storytelling itself where narrative becomes more real than any historical evidence. But it is also much more than that—when the performance and reperformance of such a narrative exists in conflation with an Orientalized female body, the ‘reality’ it disseminates becomes a medium for anxieties of cultural identity and social order.
Meet Your Speaker
Currently an independent researcher, Aisha Dad has previously served as a Faculty Fellow at the Lloyd International Honors College at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Research Affiliate at the Carolina Asia Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and as the Director of the Classics Gaming Collaborative.
Event Details
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2026
Time: 12:30–1:30 p.m. ET
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: Free
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel after the event.
Expect spirited discussion, big questions, and new insights!
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