Conceptions and Configurations of the Arabic Literary Canon Workshop
This workshop endeavors to look at the conceptions and configurations of the Arabic literary canon as it was conceived by pre-modern Arab scholars, later reconfigured by early-modern orientalist scholars in Europe, and engaged with by modern and contemporary Arab writers, whether in Arabic or in English.
One of the questions we want to ask is how the canon was conceptualized across space and time, periods and languages – what did the Arabic literary canon mean for pre-modernists, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century orientalists, and then for modern/contemporary writers? In order to pursue this project, we intend to bring together an international team of academics working across the fields of literary studies, the history of ideas and of book/manuscript, Empire studies, postcolonial as well as decolonial studies, and the sociology of literature. We investigate the development and formation of Arabic Canon(s) as a Global and a Glocal enterprise that is influx owing to political, economic, ideological, and cultural forces.