Arabic literary studies have recently been developing towards reconstructing literary practice in historical and conceptual terms beyond national philologies and evaluative aesthetics. The panel "Arabic Literary Concepts" is part of this development, by examining central terms of Arabic literary history and discussing the problem of translating historical Arabic into modern and Western academic discourse. The focus is on research projects between America, Europe and the Arab world that attempt to re-theorize Arabic literature using its own terminology. Specifically, the panel will introduce terms from the fields of adab, philosophy and rhetoric, as well as literary criticism, dealing with both the so-called classical period and Arabic modernity/modernism (Nahda). Based on the examination of central concepts, literary history will be rethought as an activity that combines close reading, philology, the linking of texts, and the conceptualization of changes, shifts and ruptures. Our talks will focus in particular on the hermeneutic boundary between contemporary positionality, colonial, nationalist and orientalist distortions and argue for new philological sensibilities and possibilities of interpretation. Disciplines LiteratureParticipants

• Prof. Lara Harb -- Presenter
• Enass Khansa -- Presenter
• Dr. Haifa Alfaisal -- Presenter
• Johannes Stephan -- Organizer, Presenter, Chair

Johannes Stephan is the Editor in Chief and Academic Coordinator of the KALiMaT research project at Freie Universität Berlin.