Wednesday 31 October at 18:00
at the Mediterranean Institute, Ir-Razzett tal-Ħursun, University of Malta Msida Campus
The Mediterranean Institute is pleased to announce the first session on its Mediterranean Institute Seminar series. The 2018/19 Seminar series will kick off this October with a lecture by Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh from the University of Kent. The lecture is titled 'Palestinian Trajectories: Novel and Politics since 1948'.
at the Mediterranean Institute, Ir-Razzett tal-Ħursun, University of Malta Msida Campus
The Mediterranean Institute is pleased to announce the first session on its Mediterranean Institute Seminar series. The 2018/19 Seminar series will kick off this October with a lecture by Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh from the University of Kent. The lecture is titled 'Palestinian Trajectories: Novel and Politics since 1948'.
The seminar will be held on Wednesday 31 October at 18:00 at the Mediterranean Institute, Ir-Razzett tal-Ħursun, University of Malta Msida Campus.
What happens to the Palestinian novel after the national dispossession of the nakba, and how do Palestinian novelists respond to this massive crisis? Abu-Manneh charts the development of the Palestinian novel in exile and under occupation from 1948 onwards, and reads it in the context of the ebb and flow of Arab and Palestinian revolution. Combining historical analysis with textual readings of key novels by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habiby, and Sahar Khalifeh, he chronicles how the Palestinian novel articulates humanism, self-sacrifice as collective redemption, mutuality, and self-realisation. By engaging with critical and postcolonial theory, questions of struggle and self-determination take centre stage.
Bashir Abu-Manneh is Reader in Postcolonial Literature, Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies, and author of 'The Palestinian Novel: From 1948 to the Present' (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and 'Fiction of the New Statesman, 1913-1939' (2011). He has also edited a collection of essays on Edward Said as literary critic and postcolonial titled 'After Said: Postcolonial Literary Studies in the Twenty-First Century' (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
A drinks reception will take place after the Seminar. For more information and to book a seat, kindly contact the Mediterranean Institute Seminar convenor, Dr Norbert Bugeja by email.