IMPORTANT NOTICE: To attend this online lecture via Zoom, prior registration is necessary: Please send an email specifying your name and academic affiliation to events@oiist.net by 3 October 2022 (Monday) at the latest. For technical reasons, the number of participants is limited. You will be informed about the organizational and technical procedure before the lecture starts.

The story of the rise of modern Arabic literature begins in the 19^th century when the encounter with Europe instigates a far-reaching process of translation, adaptation, and transmutation against the backdrop of a wider move towards state-modernization on the one hand and incipient colonization on the other. In the throes of these sweeping changes, modern Arabic literature is born as a hybrid; its early examples in the 19^th century are a mixture of traditional Arabic literary forms and modern European ones.

Turning to debates on “khayal” (the imaginary, or as we go on to discover: the spectral) in the 19^th century, this talk re-tells the story of the inception of literary modernity in Arabic, in the late Ottoman period as an arduous reckoning with modern political sovereignty.

Dr. Maha AbdelMegeed is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at the American University of Beirut. Her current research focuses on rethinking the narratives of the origins of literary modernity in Arabic as well as on the changing conceptions of Arabic language from mid 18^thcentury till the early decades of the 20^thcentury. Dr. AbdelMegeed is currently a visiting scholar at the Orient-Institut Istanbul.