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Dr. Haseena Naji

Folklorist  |  Narratologist

Researcher and educator in narrative analysis and folklore studies — examining oral traditions, ritual speech, and cultural identity in South Indian and indigenous communities through structuralist and comparative frameworks.

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About

Biography

Education & Positions

2023 – Present
Assistant Professor
Division of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT Chennai
2016 – 2023
Ph.D., Department of English Studies
Central University of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur
2013 – 2014
Bachelor of Education
Department of English, University of Kerala
2010 – 2012
M.A. English Language & Literature
Fatima Mata National College (Autonomous), Kollam, Kerala
2007 – 2010
B.A. English Language & Literature
Sree Narayana College for Women, Kollam, Kerala

Dr. Haseena Naji is an Assistant Professor in the Division of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, at Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai. She is a researcher and educator specialising in narrative analysis, folklore studies, and indigenous knowledge systems, with a strong foundation in structuralist and interdisciplinary methodologies.

Her work explores ritual speech, oral traditions, and cultural identity, particularly in South Indian and indigenous communities. She integrates comparative folklore studies, linguistic anthropology, and performance analysis to examine how oral traditions function as sites of cultural memory, resistance, and knowledge transmission.

Her doctoral thesis, “Narrativising Experience: A Structuralist Analysis of the Polymorphous Kurichyan Tales with Special Reference to Propp and Ochs and Capps” (Central University of Tamil Nadu, 2023), argues that universal structural frameworks like Propp’s are insufficient for capturing the semantic richness of indigenous oral narratives, and that incorporating Ochs and Capps’ dimension of linearity provides a more comprehensive analytical lens.

She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Kurichyan community of Wayanad, Kerala, documenting oral storytelling, ritual songs, and indigenous knowledge transmission. She is dedicated to preserving and critically analysing indigenous storytelling practices through active contributions to academic networks, interdisciplinary collaborations, and scholarly publications.

Affiliations & Roles

  • Assistant Professor, Division of English, VIT Chennai
  • Faculty Coordinator, Women Development Cell, VIT Chennai (2024–present)
  • Innovation Ambassador, IIC — MoE’s Innovation Cell
  • Member, International Society of Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR)
  • Member, American Folklore Society (AFS)
  • Lifetime Member, FSLE-India (ASLE-USA Chapter)
Areas of Inquiry

Research Interests

Dr. Naji’s research sits at the intersection of narratology, folklore studies, and structural analysis, seeking to understand how indigenous oral traditions encode cultural knowledge through narrative form.

Narratology & Narrative Analysis

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Exploring the formal structures and dimensions of storytelling across cultures and traditions.

Dr. Naji’s doctoral research examines how experience is narrativised in indigenous oral traditions. Her work focuses on the formal structures of storytelling — how narratives are organised, sequenced, and made meaningful — and how these structures vary across cultural contexts. She works specifically on the intersection of narrative theory and oral performance, asking how traditional analytical frameworks can be expanded to account for non-linear, polymorphous storytelling.

Structuralism & Post-structuralism in Folklore

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Applying and critiquing structuralist methods in the study of folk narratives, moving beyond Eurocentric models.

Dr. Naji engages critically with structuralist methods in folklore, examining how frameworks developed for Western fairy tales perform when applied to non-Western traditions. Her research demonstrates both the utility and the limits of Eurocentric structural models, arguing for culturally sensitive analytical approaches that do not reduce indigenous narratives to foreign templates.

Indigenous Oral Narratives

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Documenting and analyzing the Kurichyan tribal traditions of Wayanad, Kerala — their stories, structures, and cultural significance.

The oral traditions of the Kurichyan tribal community of Wayanad, Kerala form the core of Dr. Naji’s fieldwork. She documents and analyses their folksongs, origin myths, and ritual narratives, examining how these stories encode cultural memory, record historical events such as tiger attacks and colonial encounters, and sustain community identity across generations.

Propp’s Morphological Framework

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Extending and recontextualizing Vladimir Propp’s 31 narrative functions for non-Western tale traditions.

Dr. Naji’s work extends Vladimir Propp’s 31 narrative functions — originally derived from Russian folktales — to indigenous South Indian oral traditions. She demonstrates that while Proppian morphology offers a productive starting point, it must be significantly adapted to capture the semantic and performative dimensions of traditions such as the Kurichyan folksongs and the Marmaaya Paattu.

Ochs & Capps’ Narrative Dimensions

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Integrating dimensions of tellership, embeddedness, linearity, tellability, and moral stance into structural analysis.

Dr. Naji integrates Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps’ five-dimensional framework into structural narrative analysis. Her doctoral thesis argues that the dimension of linearity, in particular, is essential for understanding the polymorphous character of Kurichyan tales, which resist the sequential logic assumed by classical structuralism. Combining both frameworks produces a far richer analytical lens for non-Western oral narratives.

Mythology & Folkloristics

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Studying myths and folk traditions as repositories of cultural memory and collective wisdom.

Dr. Naji studies myths and folk traditions as living repositories of cultural knowledge, examining how communities encode cosmologies, moral values, and historical consciousness in narrative form. Her work connects comparative mythology with contemporary folkloristics, attending to both the formal properties and the social functions of mythic narratives across South Indian and indigenous communities.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

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Long-term community-based documentation of oral storytelling, ritual songs, and indigenous knowledge transmission through participant observation and in-depth interviews.

Dr. Naji has conducted extensive fieldwork among the Kurichyan community of Wayanad (2018–2025) and the Malai Pandaram of Pathanamthitta. Her methods include long-term participant observation, in-depth interviews, and the recording of oral performances. Most recently she documented the Thira festival and mortality rituals in Mananthavady (2025), examining lamentation practices and inter-community exchange between Kurichya, Malaya, and Paniya communities.

Discourse Analysis of Indigenous Narratives

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Analyzing the discursive strategies and pragmatic dimensions of indigenous storytelling practices.

Dr. Naji examines the discursive strategies through which indigenous storytellers construct meaning — how they signal narrative boundaries, manage co-tellership, embed stories within conversational contexts, and negotiate moral positions. This work draws on linguistic anthropology and conversation analysis to illuminate the pragmatic dimensions of oral performance that purely structural approaches miss.

Mortality, Ritual & Cultural Memory

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Examining death rituals, ancestral veneration, and commemorative practices as sites of cultural identity and community memory.

Dr. Naji’s research explores death rituals, ancestral veneration, and commemorative practices as sites of cultural identity formation. Her forthcoming article in Mortality (Taylor & Francis) examines healing epistemologies and ancestral spirits among the Kurichyas. She is also co-author of a forthcoming chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Dark Events examining the commemorative procession of Kerala’s politician Oommen Chandy as a contemporary death ritual.
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Current Research Project

Ethnographic study of the rituals and ceremonies of the Kurichyan community in Wayanad, Kerala, India — documenting and analyzing the living ceremonial practices that sustain indigenous cultural identity.

Scholarly Work

Publications

Journal Articles

Accepted

“Spirits, Sanctions, and Cures: Ancestral Veneration and the Epistemology of Healing among the Kurichyas of Wayanad, Kerala, India”

Mortality, Taylor & Francis

Examines ancestral veneration and indigenous healing epistemologies among the Kurichyan community of Wayanad, Kerala.

2023

“Construction of Hegemonic Femininity and Masculinity in Upper Primary School Textbooks: A Study on SCERT Textbooks of Classes 5 to 7”

Language and Language Teaching 23.1 (2023)

Investigates the construction and reinforcement of gender norms — hegemonic femininity and masculinity — in Kerala SCERT textbooks used in upper primary education (Classes 5 through 7).

2022

“Inundating Cultural Diversity: A Critical Study of Oral Narratives of Kurichyas and Guarani in the Structuralist Perspective”

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 14.3 (2022)

A comparative Proppian analysis examining the oral narratives of the Kurichyan community of India and the Guarani of Paraguay, revealing how structuralist methods illuminate both convergences and divergences across culturally distant traditions.

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.13

2022

“Revisiting Propp: A Structuralist Analysis of Marmaaya Paattu of Kurichyan Tribe in Wayanad”

Roots International Journal of Multidisciplinary Researches 8.4 (2022)

A structural analysis of the origin myth of Malakkari in the Tree Song (Marmaaya Paattu) tradition of the Kurichyan tribe, demonstrating how Proppian functions manifest in and must be adapted for this indigenous narrative form.

Book Chapters

Under Review

“Death, Ritual, and Deification: Examining the Commemorative Procession of Kerala’s Iconic Politician, Oommen Chandy”

Jithin Joseph, Haseena Naji, and Sharon P. B.

The Routledge Handbook of Dark Events: Celebrations, Heritage, and Customs of Death and the Macabre, ed. Brianna Wyatt, Hannah Stewart, and Philip Stone. Routledge.

2025

“The Urban Gestalt: Understanding Lefebvre’s Vision of City”

Jithin Joseph, Haseena Naji, et al.

Interstices of Space and Memory, ed. Sreedevi Santhosh et al. Routledge, 2025, pp. 117–22.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003606666-22

Engagement

Invited Talks & Activities

International Conference

“Unveiling Cultural Nuances: Integrating Ochs and Capps’ Linearity with Propp’s Framework in the Analysis of Kurichyan Folk Songs”

ISFNR 19th Congress, University of Latvia, Riga

June 2024
International Conference

“When the Forest Crosses the Threshold: Tiger Attacks, Rumour, and Indigenous Memory in the Kurichyan Folksongs of Wayanad”

42nd Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Stockholm

June 2025
International Conference

“Restorying as Resistance: Narrative Flexibility and Cultural Negotiation in Kurichyan Folksongs of Wayanad”

137th Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society, Atlanta, Georgia

October 2025
Keynote Address

“Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Career Guidance from the Pursuit of Happyness”

Jeppiar College of Arts and Science, Chennai

December 2024
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Presented papers at 15+ international and national conferences across narratology, folklore studies, ecocriticism, and cultural analysis.

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Presented at the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting 2025 (Atlanta) and the 42nd Perspectives on Contemporary Legend Conference, Stockholm 2025.

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Cleared UGC Junior Research Fellowship and National Eligibility Test for Assistant Professor.

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Conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Kurichyan and Malai Pandaram communities in Kerala (2018–2025).

Research Technology

Computational Analysis

Proppian Narrative Analysis Tool

A computational tool for analyzing narratives using an integrated framework that combines Vladimir Propp’s 31 narrative functions with Ochs & Capps’ five narrative dimensions. Designed specifically for non-Western and non-linear narratives.

  • Propp’s 31 narrative functions analysis
  • Ochs & Capps’ five-dimensional framework
  • Integrated structural and experiential analysis
  • Non-linear narrative support
  • Cross-cultural narrative comparison
  • Detailed analytical reports

Built on the theoretical foundation of Dr. Naji’s doctoral research on the polymorphous Kurichyan tales.

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Launch Tool

Free for researchers and educators

Connect

Academic Profiles

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Get in Touch

Contact

Email

haseenanaji@gmail.com

Phone

+91 953 909 2991

Institution

Division of English
School of Social Sciences and Languages
Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai
Tamil Nadu, India