Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation
- Author: Michelle Hartman
- Pages: 256 pp
- Published: 2018
- ISBN: 9781603293150 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603293143 (Hardcover)
"Excellent, timely, and well curated—the collection will fill a gaping need because it engages in thoughtful public discussion on the content and methodology for Arabic literature in translation courses."
—Kamran Rastegar, Tufts University
Understanding the complexities of Arab politics, history, and culture has never been more important for North American readers. Yet even as Arabic literature is increasingly being translated into English, the modern Arabic literary tradition is still often treated as other—controversial, dangerous, difficult, esoteric, or exotic. This volume examines modern Arabic literature in context and introduces creative teaching methods that reveal the literature’s richness, relevance, and power to anglophone students.
Addressing the complications of translation head on, the volume interweaves such important issues such as gender, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the status of Arabic literature in world literature. Essays cover writers from the recent past, like Emile Habiby and Tayeb Salih; contemporary Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian literatures; and the literature of the nineteenth-century Nahda.
Honorable Mention in the Idaho State University Teaching Literature Book Award
Michelle Hartman is associate professor of Arabic literature at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Her research is primarily on women writers from Lebanon and Palestine. She is the author of Native Tongue, Stranger Talk and has also translated from Arabic four novels and a short story collection.
Michelle Hartman
Allen Hibbard
Rebecca C. Johnson
Rula Jurdi
Maya Kesrouany
Anne-Marie McManus
Philip Metres
Mara Naaman
M. Lynx Qualey
Ken Seigneurie
Caroline Seymour-Jorn
Stephen Sheehi
Acknowledgments (vii)
Introduction: Why Theory, Politics, and Ethics Matter (1)
Part I: Situated Literatures: History, Current Events, and the Politics of Teaching Arabic Literature
Arabic Literature and World Literature (21)
Untranslatability, Discomfort, Ideology: Should We Teach Arabic Literature? (41)
Teaching (beyond) the Conflict: A Contrapuntal Reading (62)
Teaching Scandals: Gender and Translation in the Arabic Literature Classroom (79)
Part II: Engaging the Canon in Modern Arabic Literature
In Translation: Cosmopolitan Reading in the Nahda (97)
The Joke’s on Me: Teaching Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist in Translation (118)
Arabic Poetics through a Canonical Translation: Teaching Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (132)
Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation in Middle Tennessee (148)
Part III: Comparative Contexts, Youth Culture, New Media
Youth Culture in the Arab World: Explorations through Literature in Translation (169)
Teaching New Egyptian Writing: Experimental Style in Arabic and the Undergraduate Reader (183)
Syrian Literature after 2000: Publics, Mobilities, Revolt (200)
Teaching Arabic Literature in Open Spaces (220)
Selected Arabic Literary Works in English (237)
Notes on Contributors (241)
Index (243)
