Deadline extended until Sunday, 15th December 2019. Only a few spots left.

PalREAD Discussion Workshop - Registration Required
Title: Writing Arabic Literature in Latin America
Date: Tuesday January 7 2020
Time: 14.30-18.00 (with breaks)
Seminarzentrum L116
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
14195 Berlin

When Jorge Amado, Brazil’s celebrated novelist, was asked to write a novel on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the "discovery" of America in 1992, he decided to write The Discovery of America by the Turks, telling the story of Radwan Murad and Jamil Bishara, who arrived together, from Lebanon and Syria, to the shores of Bahia in 1903. Radwan and Jamil were Arabic-speaking Levantines. For them, as for the thousands of Arab immigrants who arrived to Latin America’s shores from the Ottoman Empire, the "American Dream" also extended to the south of the Río Bravo —from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego— where they became popularly known as turcos. But the mother tongue of these "Turks" was Arabic— a language that was undergoing, during these critical moments of intellectual modernisation and reform of early 20th century, a cultural and literary revival that these turcos continued to exercise in the new lands. In this workshop, we will read and examine selected texts related to the presence of Arabic language and literature in Latin America during 3 moments of linguistic conflation in the lives of these immigrants and their descendants: (1) The first half of the 20th century and the first generation of Arab immigrants; (2) Third World solidarity and political exchange between the1960s – 1980s; (3) and the contemporary period.

The workshop is hosted by the ERC project PalREAD-Country of Words, and will be led by Shadi Rohana (El Colegio de México) and PalREAD PI Refqa Abu-Remaileh, with guest speakers Camila Pastor De Maria y Campos (CIDE, Mexico) and Chilean author Lina Meruane.

Participants are required to register until Dec. 12th, 2019 via email to m.gaida@fu-berlin.de.

Reading materials in Arabic and Spanish will be sent to registered participants in advance.