Reuven Snir

Reuven Snir
Résidents Labex RFIEA+
pas Eurias

dates de séjour

13/01/2020 - 10/07/2020

discipline

Études culturelles
Littérature

Fonction d’origine

Professeur

Institution d’origine

Department of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Haifa

pays d'origine

Israël

projet de recherche

“Prophecies of a Madman in a Cursed City”: The Birth & Demise of the Arab-Jewish Literature

We are witnessing the demise of Arab-Jewish culture ― a tradition of more than 1,500 years is vanishing following an unspoken agreement between Zionism and Arab nationalism; both highlighting a “pure” Jewish-Zionist identity against a “pure” Muslim-Arab one. I plan to write a book on modern Jewish Arabic belles lettres bearing symbolically the title of a book by Samīr Naqqāsh that passed away without possessing elementary means for honorable survival. “I don’t exist in [Israel],” he said before his death, “I don’t feel that I belong anywhere, not since my roots were torn from [Baghdad].”

biographie

I am a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Haifa teaching courses on Arabic poetry, mysticism, Arab-Jewish Arab-Jewish culture, and cultural identities. I have published in Arabic, Hebrew, and English and has translated poetry between the three languages. My last books in English are: Baghdad ― The City in Verse (Harvard University Press, 2013); Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity? Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities (Brill, 2015); and Modern Arabic Literature: A Theoretical Framework (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). For other details, please see my attached CV.