Salik Basharat Geelani (salik.basharat.geelani@vanderbilt.edu) is a PhD student in the Department of English at Vanderbilt University. His work focuses on potential dialogues between Black Studies, Caribbean Literature, South Asian Literature, Political Theology, 20th/21st century traditions of Radical Poetics and Aesthetics, and the emerging field of Critical Kashmir Studies. His master's thesis (for Ashoka University), Reading Shahid, Inheriting Ishmael, examined the complications of literary inheritance and the dialectics of free will in Agha Shahid Ali's collection of English ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. Currently, Salik is studying the ideas of the 'Sovereign's Garden/Keep' and the 'State's Open Air Prison' in the context of Kashmir's struggle for self-determination. His poetry can be found in Qurbatein (by the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Ashoka University), netherQuarterly, and Inverse Journal.