Masud has authored, co-authored, and edited textbooks for learners at all levels of Hindi and Urdu. His recent publications include:
Reading Urdu: Novice to Intermediate
Co-author with Peter Knapczyk and Kusum Knapczyk, New York, USA: Routledge. 2026
Urdu Dictionary for Beginners
New Delhi, India: Rekhta Publications. 2023
Urdu-namah: A Textbook for Intermediate and Advanced Urdu
Co-edited with Syed Akbar Hyder, Karachi, Pakistan: City Press. 2020
Complete Urdu
Revised for a new edition, London, UK: Teach Yourself. 2017
Essential Urdu Dictionary
London, UK: Teach Yourself. 2015
One marsiya of Mir Ans (A Marsiya Reader)
New Delhi, India: Arshia Publications. 2011
A longstanding area of Masud's scholarly interest is Urdu marsiya (elegiac) poetry, particularly the work of the renowned poet Mir Anis (1803–1874). After more than a decade of collecting, editing, and researching Anis's poetry, Masud published the three-volume anthology Anis: 111 Marsiya Poems, containing more than 36,000 couplets. The project, supported by generous funding from the Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS) at the University of Chicago, was published by City Press in Karachi and Anuugya Books in Delhi in 2021.
Masud's doctoral research also led to his continuing engagement with literary translation. His Urdu translations include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince and Patrick Süskind's The Story of Mr. Sommer. He has also devoted significant attention to the literary and cultural legacy of Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887), the last king of Awadh. His work in this area includes editing and translating Masud Hasan Rizvi Adeeb's Sahitya Academy Award-winning Lucknow ka Shahi Stage (The Royal Stage of Lucknow)from Urdu into Hindi, with an accompanying glossary and notes (Aakhar Prakashan, 2019). His edited and translated biography of Wajid Ali Shah, Sultan-e-Alam Wajid Ali Shah, is forthcoming from Aakhar Prakashan in 2026.
Masud's current research focuses on Wajid Ali Shah's autobiographical narrative poem Ishq-namah, which comprises approximately 10,000 couplets. His English translation of Ishq-namah will make this important text accessible to scholars working across fields including Urdu literary history, Awadh court culture, Indo-Islamic social history, ethnomusicology, and performance studies.
His translations and scholarship on the history and literature of Awadh, as well as Urdu literature more broadly, have appeared in The Journal of Urdu Studies (Brill), Tafheem (India), Pratiman (India), and Aaj (Pakistan). He serves on the advisory boards of several academic journals, including the Columbia Journal of Asia, Tehqiq Nama (Government College University, Lahore), Tahqeeqi-o-Tanqeedi Jareeda (Government College Women University, Sialkot), and Bazyaft (Oriental College, Punjab University, Lahore).
Before joining Duke, Masud taught Hindi and Urdu at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Chicago, as well as at Columbia University.
