AUB - English - Recent Activities

Recent Activities

April 30, 2012
Professor Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature from University of California, Los Angeles, gave a public lecture called "Occidentalism." It was co-sponsored by English, CVSP, CAMES and CASAR.
April 26, 2012
The Department of English and the Communication Skills Program organized "A Celebration of Student Writing" in West Hall Common Room. Students enrolled in Communication Skills courses had the opportunity to showcase their work of the completed semester.
April 19, 2012
Selma Dabbagh, a Palestinian-British author, presented a talk about her new novel Out of It.
The author addressed the issue of craft and content and their relationship to each other for her in the writing of her novel. She talked about her background and its influence on her writing. On craft she explored several questions, like did she start from a theme or characters; how does she craft characters; how does she plan, plot and outline; where does she write and how does write? On content she addressed what she thinks is the relationship of the content to the above, how does it affect the development of her writing and does she have readership in mind when she writes and if so, who?
March 12, 2012
Rula Baalbaki and David Wrisley of the department and undergraduate translation student Lara Bou Ghanem contributed to the literary event “Al-Kitaba fi al-Thawrat (Writing in a Time of Revolutions)” with translations from Arabic into English and simultaneous readings of literary works by Kamal al-Riyahi, Khaled Khalife, Nadia al-Kowkabany and Ali al-Jallawi.
March 8, 2012
Associate Kamran Rastegar in the Department of English presented a talk on Colonial Cinema, Memory, Masculinity; Screening The Four Feathers.
This talk examined the meeting point between memory, masculinity and the trauma of colonial defeats in the cinematic adaptations of A. E. W. Mason's classic early-Edwardian novel, The Four Feathers (1902). With at least seven film renditions having been produced of the work from 1915 to 2002, The Four Feathers has enjoyed an extraordinary longevity as a vessel for colonial propaganda or nostalgia. This talk focused on the question of how the narrative memorializes the British colonial defeat in the Sudan in 1882, and how it attempts to reconstitute colonial mastery through its projection and celebration of colonial masculine ideals, examining in particular three film adaptations of the novel (1929,1939, 2002). Through this window, we may begin to discern the importance of gendering in responses to the perceived traumas of colonial defeats for colonizing powers.

November 11, 2011
“Amina Jaafar, graduate student in English Literature and David Wrisley translated various poems of two contemporary Andalusian authors, Antonio Carvajal and Rafael Juarez. Graduate student in English Literature Ghiwa Sayegh read them at an event entitled “Encounter in Spanish poetry: 2 Andalusian poets” held at AUB, in coordination with the Instituto Cervantes and the Embassy of Spain in Lebanon.”