Harold Aram Veeser


Harold Aram Veeser is a professor of English at City College of New York, best known for his founding role as a theorist of new historicism, in addition to his contributions to the historiography of postcolonial theory.
He holds a BA, MA, and PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where he studied under the supervision of postcolonial theorist Edward Said.
Since 1997 he has been employed at the City College of New York where he teaches courses on postcolonialism, biography and autobiography, 17th century British poetry, modern and contemporary British literature.

Major works

In 2010, Veeser published a biography of Said, which combines " never-before-published interviews, debate transcripts, and photographs" with short personal anecdotes. Derided as "hagiography" in a review published by the American conservative think tank Middle East Forum, other reviewers have been more positive, finding it to be a "corrective to some of the more fawning tributes that have appeared in recent years," drawing comparisons to Robert Irwin's more openly critical analysis of Said's work, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents.
Prior to his work on Said, Veeser was primarily known for his literary and art criticism, collected in a number of influential collections of literary criticism, in addition to popular magazines and academic journals, including The Nation Magazine, The Journal of Armenian Studies, Ararat, and Armenian Forum.

Major publications in chronological order