Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Associate Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature, Department of English
Associated Faculty, Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages
American University of Beirut
D.Phil. University of Oxford 2005; M.A. Free University of Berlin 2000
Email: sm78@aub.edu.lb
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi obtained her D.Phil. in modern Arabic literature from the University of Oxford in 2005, with a dissertation on interrelations of modern Arabic literature and art under the supervision of Dr. Robn Ostle, and her M.A. in Arabic literature and comparative literature (double major) from the Free University of Berlin in 2000, with a dissertation on memory in the novels of Elias Khoury under the supervision of Dr. Renate Jacobi and Dr. Hella Tiedemann.
She is an Associate Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of English and an Associated Faculty in the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages at the American University of Beirut.
From 2014-17, she served as Chairperson of the Department of English.
In 2017-18, she is on research leave as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.
Her research is in modern and contemporary Arabic literature, comparative literature, book history and art, collection and museum studies, cultural memory and history, and aesthetics and politics/political dissidence. She is currently working on two book projects: In Search of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra: a life in literature and art between Palestine and Iraq (Edinburgh University Press) and On Wannous: Critical Studies on the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual (ed. with Robert Myers).
Her publications include: Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books, ed. with May Muzaffar (Skira 2017); Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (Reichert 2012); Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, ed. with John Pedro Schwartz (Ashgate 2012); “The Arabic Novel between Aesthetic Concerns and the Causes of Man: Commitment in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif,” in Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s, eds. Friederike Pannewick and Georges Khalil (Reichert 2015), 143–55; “Abounaddara’s take on images in the Syrian revolution,” Jadaliyya 08.07.2014 and 02.09.2014; “Art and Political Dissent in Post-War Lebanon: Walid Sadek’s fi annani akbar min picasso [bigger than picasso],” IJMES 45.3 (2013): 535–60; "Contemporary Book Art in the Middle East: The Book as Document in Iraq," Art History 35/5 (2012); "The Forbidden Paradise: How Etel Adnan Learned to Paint in Arabic," and "On the Necessity of Writing the Present: Elias Khoury and ‘the Birth of the Novel’ in Lebanon," in: Arabic Literature: Postmodern Perspectives eds. Angelika Neuwirth et al (Saqi 2010); (ed.), Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, MIT EJMES 7 (2007).
See https://aub.academia.edu/sonjamejcheratassi
She is a member of the advisory boards of the Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, and the Orient-Institut Beirut, Max Weber Foundation (German humanities institutes abroad).
She serves on the editorial boards of the book series literatures in context: Arabic – Persian – Turkish and Beiruter Texte und Studien.
Teaching: Comparative Literature, World Literature, Modern Arabic Literature, Global Modernisms, Literary Theory, The Novel, Word and Image, Book History and Art, Gender and Cultural Production, Civilization Studies Program core courses.
Courses she has taught include:
ENGL 325 World Literature.
ENGL 306 Word and Image.
ENGL 309 Arab Modernisms.
ENGL 301 Introduction to Bibliography and Research Methods.
ENGL 221 Introduction to Literary Theory.
ENGL 217 The Novel.
MEST 316 Introduction to Contemporary Art in the Middle East.
CVSP 201 Ancient Near East and Classical Civilizations.
CVSP 202 Medieval, Islamic and Renaissance Civilizations.
CVSP 203 Enlightenment and Modernity.
CVSP 204 Contemporary Studies.
CVSP 208 Gender and Cultural Production.
CVSP 250 Introduction to Art Appreciation: Changing Notions of Art and Artist.
CVSP 251 Civilization through the Arts: Modern Art’s Many Faces.
FAAH 150 Survey of Art
http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/english/Pages/mejcher-atassi.aspx
Address: American University of Beirut
Department of English
P.O.Box 11-0236
Riad El Solh 11702020
Beirut, Lebanon
Associate Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature, Department of English
Associated Faculty, Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages
American University of Beirut
D.Phil. University of Oxford 2005; M.A. Free University of Berlin 2000
Email: sm78@aub.edu.lb
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi obtained her D.Phil. in modern Arabic literature from the University of Oxford in 2005, with a dissertation on interrelations of modern Arabic literature and art under the supervision of Dr. Robn Ostle, and her M.A. in Arabic literature and comparative literature (double major) from the Free University of Berlin in 2000, with a dissertation on memory in the novels of Elias Khoury under the supervision of Dr. Renate Jacobi and Dr. Hella Tiedemann.
She is an Associate Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of English and an Associated Faculty in the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages at the American University of Beirut.
From 2014-17, she served as Chairperson of the Department of English.
In 2017-18, she is on research leave as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.
Her research is in modern and contemporary Arabic literature, comparative literature, book history and art, collection and museum studies, cultural memory and history, and aesthetics and politics/political dissidence. She is currently working on two book projects: In Search of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra: a life in literature and art between Palestine and Iraq (Edinburgh University Press) and On Wannous: Critical Studies on the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual (ed. with Robert Myers).
Her publications include: Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books, ed. with May Muzaffar (Skira 2017); Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (Reichert 2012); Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, ed. with John Pedro Schwartz (Ashgate 2012); “The Arabic Novel between Aesthetic Concerns and the Causes of Man: Commitment in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif,” in Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s, eds. Friederike Pannewick and Georges Khalil (Reichert 2015), 143–55; “Abounaddara’s take on images in the Syrian revolution,” Jadaliyya 08.07.2014 and 02.09.2014; “Art and Political Dissent in Post-War Lebanon: Walid Sadek’s fi annani akbar min picasso [bigger than picasso],” IJMES 45.3 (2013): 535–60; "Contemporary Book Art in the Middle East: The Book as Document in Iraq," Art History 35/5 (2012); "The Forbidden Paradise: How Etel Adnan Learned to Paint in Arabic," and "On the Necessity of Writing the Present: Elias Khoury and ‘the Birth of the Novel’ in Lebanon," in: Arabic Literature: Postmodern Perspectives eds. Angelika Neuwirth et al (Saqi 2010); (ed.), Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, MIT EJMES 7 (2007).
See https://aub.academia.edu/sonjamejcheratassi
She is a member of the advisory boards of the Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, and the Orient-Institut Beirut, Max Weber Foundation (German humanities institutes abroad).
She serves on the editorial boards of the book series literatures in context: Arabic – Persian – Turkish and Beiruter Texte und Studien.
Teaching: Comparative Literature, World Literature, Modern Arabic Literature, Global Modernisms, Literary Theory, The Novel, Word and Image, Book History and Art, Gender and Cultural Production, Civilization Studies Program core courses.
Courses she has taught include:
ENGL 325 World Literature.
ENGL 306 Word and Image.
ENGL 309 Arab Modernisms.
ENGL 301 Introduction to Bibliography and Research Methods.
ENGL 221 Introduction to Literary Theory.
ENGL 217 The Novel.
MEST 316 Introduction to Contemporary Art in the Middle East.
CVSP 201 Ancient Near East and Classical Civilizations.
CVSP 202 Medieval, Islamic and Renaissance Civilizations.
CVSP 203 Enlightenment and Modernity.
CVSP 204 Contemporary Studies.
CVSP 208 Gender and Cultural Production.
CVSP 250 Introduction to Art Appreciation: Changing Notions of Art and Artist.
CVSP 251 Civilization through the Arts: Modern Art’s Many Faces.
FAAH 150 Survey of Art
http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/english/Pages/mejcher-atassi.aspx
Address: American University of Beirut
Department of English
P.O.Box 11-0236
Riad El Solh 11702020
Beirut, Lebanon
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Books and edited volumes by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary
circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David
Hotel. This group of aspiring artists, writers, and intellectuals—
among them Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Sally
Kassab, Walid Khalidi, and Rasha Salam, some of whom would go on
to become acclaimed authors, scholars, and critics—came together
across religious lines in a fleeting moment of possibility within a
troubled history. What brought these Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
friends together, and what became of them in the aftermath of 1948,
the year of the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian
Nakba?
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi tells the story of this unlikely friendship and in
so doing offers an intimate cultural and social history of Palestine
in the critical postwar period. She vividly reconstructs the vanished
social world of these protagonists, tracing the connections between
the specificity of individual lives and the larger contexts in which
they are embedded. In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its
artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates
how social biography can provide a picture of the past that
is at once more inclusive and more personal. This group portrait,
she argues, allows us to glimpse alternative possibilities that exist
within and alongside the fraught history of Israel/Palestine. Bringing
a remarkable era to life through archival research and nuanced
interdisciplinary scholarship, An Impossible Friendship unearths
prospects for historical reconciliation, solidarity, and justice.
Creativity versus Destruction: My Recollection on the Making of Rafa Nasiri's Artist Books
p. 8-35;
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi,
Unfolidng Narratives from Iraq: Rafa Nasiri's Book Art
p. 36-103
Papers by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary
circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David
Hotel. This group of aspiring artists, writers, and intellectuals—
among them Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Sally
Kassab, Walid Khalidi, and Rasha Salam, some of whom would go on
to become acclaimed authors, scholars, and critics—came together
across religious lines in a fleeting moment of possibility within a
troubled history. What brought these Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
friends together, and what became of them in the aftermath of 1948,
the year of the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian
Nakba?
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi tells the story of this unlikely friendship and in
so doing offers an intimate cultural and social history of Palestine
in the critical postwar period. She vividly reconstructs the vanished
social world of these protagonists, tracing the connections between
the specificity of individual lives and the larger contexts in which
they are embedded. In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its
artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates
how social biography can provide a picture of the past that
is at once more inclusive and more personal. This group portrait,
she argues, allows us to glimpse alternative possibilities that exist
within and alongside the fraught history of Israel/Palestine. Bringing
a remarkable era to life through archival research and nuanced
interdisciplinary scholarship, An Impossible Friendship unearths
prospects for historical reconciliation, solidarity, and justice.
Creativity versus Destruction: My Recollection on the Making of Rafa Nasiri's Artist Books
p. 8-35;
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi,
Unfolidng Narratives from Iraq: Rafa Nasiri's Book Art
p. 36-103
I won’t say I wish I were with you, I am with you. I see you, and I see how the dream through your hands has turned into reality rooted in the earth. “On this earth is what makes life worth living,” just as Mahmoud Darwish wrote, for when you built your wonderful village you gave back meaning to meaning. You became the sons of this land and its masters.
This is the Palestine that Younis dreamt of in the novel Bab Al Shams / Gate of the Sun. Younis had a dream made of words, and the words became wounds bleeding over the land. You became, people of Bab Al Shams, the words that carry the dream of freedom and return Palestine to Palestine.
I see in your village all the faces of the loved ones who departed on the way to the land of our Palestinian promise. Palestine is the promise of the strangers who were expelled from their land and continue to be expelled every day from their homes.
babStrangers and yet you are the sons of the land, its olives and oil!
You are the olives of Palestine that shine under the sun of justice, and as you build your village, the light of freedom flares up with you.
“Light upon light.”
I see in your eyes a nation born from the rubble of the nakba that has gone on for sixty-four years.
I see you and in my heart the words grow. I see the words and you grow in my heart, rise high and burst into the sky.
Finally, I have only the wish that you accept me as a citizen in your village, that I may learn with you the meanings of freedom and justice.
(Beirut January 12, 2013
Translated by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi).
https://arablit.org/2013/01/13/elias-khourys-letter-to-the-real-gate-of-the-sun/
- thanks to Tiffany C Yang for the poster -