Search

Arslan will discuss his current book project, tentatively entitled Becoming Mediterranean: The Sea Reconfigured in Arabic, French, and Turkish Literatures, which examines the political and cultural relevance of the Mediterranean for authors from the basin’s eastern and southern shores. The authors he analyzes for his book, such as Abdülhak Hamid Tarhan (1852–1937), Ahmad Shawqi (1868–1932), and Jeanne Archache (1902–1961), were born during the final years of the Ottoman Empire and eventually found themselves living in nation-states. Arslan argues that their writings assigned geopolitical divisions and historical turning points that we do not see in mainstream accounts of the basin because these authors had a less hierarchical attitude towards the Mediterranean than Orientalist writers did. As they witnessed unprecedented political shifts, these authors, as Arslan puts it, “thought with the Mediterranean” to situate themselves within a centuries-long history and seek in this history moments of inspiration for new forms of political and cultural solidarity. Becoming Mediterranean also demonstrates how the postcritical turn in literary studies can offer a repertoire of new concepts and phrases that shed new light on world literature scholarship as its Mediterranean framework offers new interpretations on well-known works of Middle Eastern literatures. 

C. Ceyhun Arslan is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Koç University and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at EUME and Saarland University. His book, The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures, has been published by Edinburgh University Press. He is working on a second book tentatively entitled Becoming Mediterranean: The Sea Reconfigured in Arabic, French, and Turkish Literatures. His work has appeared in multiple journals and edited volumes such as Journal of Arabic Literature, Utopian Studies, and Comparative Literature Studies.

Loaay Wattad, a 2023-2024 EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, is a literary scholar and critic with a focus on the sociology of Palestinian and Israeli children’s literature. Based at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, his dissertation, titled "Minor Literature for Minor Readers," presents a comparative analysis of Palestinian children’s literature. Beyond his academic pursuits, Loaay actively contributes to the Maktoob translators' circle, dedicated to translating literary works from Arabic to Hebrew. Furthermore, he serves as the editor-in-chief of the Hkaya journal, specializing in Arabic children's literature.

Please note that the Berliner Seminar will take place on-site at the Forum Transregionale Studien. We kindly ask for prior registration via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de. Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.

ICS Export