Visiting Speaker Event with Professor Ismail Nashef
A Language of One’s Own: Literary Arabic, The Palestinians, and Israel
Professor Nashef is the Head of Sociology and Anthropology, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
| An Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies seminar | |
|---|---|
| Date | 29 October 2025 |
| Time | 16:15 to 18:30 |
| Place | IAIS Building/LT2 |
Event details
Abstract
Ismail Nashef has held academic positions at various universities in the Arab world and beyond. In addition to his academic career, he is a literary and art critic, as well as a curator. He has initiated and participated in numerous cultural and academic projects both within academia and in broader cultural spheres. His research focuses on materiality, language, and ideology, exploring how these themes manifest and are expressed in literature and visual arts. His current research examines visual arts and literature in colonial contexts, with a particular emphasis on Arab Islamic societies in general and Palestinian society in particular.
Following the establishment of Israel in 1948, literary Arabic became a central medium representing the Palestinian collective within Israel and, as a result, a contested public space. Various state agencies and Palestinian groups actively engaged in this space, advocating for specific ways of reading and writing in Arabic. These approaches played a crucial role in reshaping the Palestinian collective, a process set in motion by the 1948 war. Addressing the Palestinian reading public in Israel, both state agencies and Palestinian groups employed literary criticism, along with other genres, to promote and instil their preferred modes of reading and writing. Since 1948, three distinct modes have emerged for engaging with the Palestinian reading public through literary Arabic: the public intellectual mode, the academic mode, and the professional expert mode.
