‘Displaced Texts: Arabic Literature in the Anglophone Literary Marketplace’
Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies
Arabic Studies
This Postdoc Fellowship project is hosted by Prof. Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh
2020 Humboldt Research Fellowship Programme for Postdoctoral Researchers
This project, ‘Displaced Texts: Arabic Literature in the Anglophone Literary Marketplace’, examines the production and reception of literary works from the Middle East and beyond. In particular, it scrutinises how such texts deal with displacement and the climate emergency and, in turn, how the Anglophone literary marketplace conceives of their value in telling stories about these issues. ‘Displaced Texts’ scrutinises all aspects of the publishing industry, including publishing houses, literary prizes and festivals, and the networks of literary agents, academics and cultural critics who facilitate the publication of this literature. It also examines individual publications and how they are packaged and received, assessing the broader impact of the socio-political lens through which publishers and critics routinely perceive literature that addresses these global crises. The project will be fully developed into a monograph on literatures of migration and climate catastrophe, and the politics of the literary marketplace that come to bear on such stories as they find their way to an Anglophone readership.
Keywords
- Palestinian literature, Arabic literature, displacement, Anglophone publishing, translation, bibliography