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Comments:
Susanne Klengel (Lateinamerika-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin)
Elias Khoury (NYU/Beirut)

Moderation: 
Friederike Pannewick (Centrum für Nah- und Mitteloststudien, Philipps Universität Marburg)

The workshop was held in the framework of the research program "Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe" (EUME) and in cooperation with the Universität Potsdam and the Lateinamerika Institut of Freie Universität Berlin.

In cooperation with the The Working Group Modernity and Islam (sub-project: Cultural Mobility in Near Eastern Literatures), Ottmar Ette and Friederike Pannewick organized and held two sequently workshops concerning "ArabAmericas" on 3/4 December 2004 and 16/17 June 2005 in Berlin. See more here and here.

The following two publications emerged from these workshops:

Ottmar Ette/Friederike Pannewick (eds.), ArabAmericas. The American Hemisphere and the Arab World, Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert Verlag 2006.

Andreas Pflitsch: ArabAmericas, in: Welt Trends (Sommer 2006), 14: 192-200. 

Speakers

Ottmar Ette: Chair of Romance Literature at the University of Potsdam, director of the Research Project on "Alexander von Humboldt's American Travel Diaries: Genealogy, Chronology, and Epistemology" (2014-2017), editor (together with Friederike Pannewick) of "ArabAmericas. Literary Entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World" (2006), author of "TransArea. Eine literarische Globalisierungsgeschichte" (2012) and "Viellogische Philologie. Die Literaturen der Welt und das Beispiel einer transarealen peruanischen Literatur" 2013.

Tahia Abdel Nasser: Assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University of Cairo, research interests include postcolonial literature, contemporary literature, 20th and 21st-century Latin American and Arabic literatures and cultures, new forms of comparison of the cultural production of the global south and translation studies, publications in Cairo Studies in English: "Postcolonial Autobiography and Nations" (2012) and Journal of Arabic Literature 45: "Between Exile and Elegy, Palestine and Egypt: Mourid Barghouti’s Poetry and Memoirs" (2014).

Susanne Klengel: Director of the ZI Lateinamerika-Institut at the Freie Universität Berlin, University Professor for Literatures and Cultures of Latin America, author of "Die Rückeroberung der Kultur. Lateinamerikanische Intellektuelle und das Europa der Nachkriegsjahre (1945-1952)" (2011) and "Amerika-Diskurse der Surrealisten. "Amerika" als Vision und als Feld heterogener Erfahrungen" (1994).

Elias Khoury: Lebanese novelist, playwright, critic and a prominent public intellectual, studied history and sociology in Beirut and Paris. As an academic, he became a globally distinguished professor at New York University, shuttling from Beirut each spring to teach Arabic and comparative literature. He has taught in Columbia University, in the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese University, and the Lebanese American University. He is author of ten novels which have been translated into several foreign languages, among them are "The Journey of Little Gandhi" (1989), Gate of the Sun (1998) and Yalo (2002).

Friederike Pannewick: University Professor at the Philips University Marburg, the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), in the Department of Arabic Literature and Culture, founding member of EUME, author of "Das Wagnis Tradition. Arabische Wege der Theatralität" (2000) and "Crossings and Passages in Genre and Culture" (2003), editor (togehter with Ottmar Ette) of "ArabAmericas. Literary Entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World" (2006).