Beirut's Literary Landscape | Ghenwa Hayek
We talked about Ghenwa Hayek's work on the entangled relationships between literary and cultural production, space and place, and identity formation in the modern Arab Middle East, with a specific focus on Lebanon. We also discussed her book "Beirut, Imagining the City: Space and Place in Lebanese Literature", and her research projects.
Ghenwa Hayek is an Associate Professor of Modern Arabic Literature from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her first book, Beirut, Imagining the City: Space and Place in Lebanese Literature, traces the modes of imagining the city of Beirut in Lebanese fiction from the late nineteenth century to the present, using an interdisciplinary engagement with literary and cultural studies, critical geography and studies of nationalism and identity. Hayek's current research project explores the affective impact of a century of ongoing emigration on Lebanese culture (c.1860-present), and the imaginaries and grammars that have been mobilized to express it across a wide range of cultural forms, from prose, to poetry, to cinema.
Twitter: Ghenwa Hayek
The afikra Podcast
The afikra Podcast is our flagship series featuring experts from academia, art, media, urban planning, and beyond, who are helping document and shape the histories and cultures of the Arab world through their work.
