Abstract:
Prophetic Translation: The Making of Modern Egyptian Literature explores the intersection between literature, religion and liberalism in early 20th-century Egyptian literary translations, asking what we can learn from that period and the promise that translation held for the Egyptian writers of fiction at that time. Through their adaptations and different theories of translation, these writers creatively adapted romantic and realist literature to craft a novel vocation for literary language and interpretation. This talk examines the writers’ claim to prophecy in their playful translations to suggest an original sense of literary resistance to colonial ideologies of liberal secularism in the early Arabic novel.

Bio:
Maya Issam Kesrouany is an assistant professor of Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University in Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Her book manuscript Prophetic Translation: The Making of Modern Egyptian Literature was published with Edinburgh University Press in January 2019. Her current project investigates an international cosmopolitanism of cultural production in North Africa and the Levant in the 20th century. Her research interests include nationalism and political imaginaries, cultural studies in the public sphere and critical translation theory.