Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, Department of English
Associated Faculty, Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages
Director, Center for Arts and Humanities (CAH)
Chair of the Department of English: 2014–17
D.Phil. University of Oxford 2005
M.A. Free University of Berlin 2000
Email: sm78@aub.edu.lb
Dr. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is a literary scholar and a cultural historian. She is a professor of Arabic and comparative literature in the Department of English and an associated faculty in the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages at the American University of Beirut. She also serves as the director of AUB's Center for Arts and Humanities. She is the recipient of the 2025 Intissar Ahdab Award for Women's Excellence and Impact in Research at AUB, the 2021 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Reimar Lüst Research Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange, and the 2008 Annemarie Schimmel Research Award. In 2017/18, she was an invited resident fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, and in summer 2025 she was an invited resident fellow at the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective at the Free University of Berlin. Her research focuses on modern Arabic literature and intersects with cultural and intellectual history. Grounded in modern Arabic studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, it engages with the Arabic novel, life writing, memory studies, literature archives, interrelations of word and image, book culture/art, and aesthetics and politics.
PUBLICATIONS
Authored books:
- An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948, New York: Columbia University Press (Religion, Culture, and Public Life), 2024.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/an-impossible-friendship/9780231560443
- Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2012.
https://reichert-verlag.de/media/Prospekte/Litkon_2014.pdf
- Geschichten über Geschichten: Erinnerung im Romanwerk von Elias Khoury, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2001.
https://reichert-verlag.de/media/Prospekte/Litkon_2014.pdf
Edited volumes:
- Beirut, special issue, Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte Heft XVIII/4 Winter 2024, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Daniel Schönpflug, Munich: C.H. Beck.
https://www.wiko-berlin.de/en/wikotheque/zeitschrift-fuer-ideengeschichte/issue/beirut
- The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre), 2021.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-theatre-of-sadallah-wannous/15C4A203FC765A1F33339B9CD2A0551D#fndtn-information
- Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and May Muzaffar, Milan: Skira, 2016.
https://www.skira.net/en/books/rafa-nasiri-1/
- Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.
https://www.routledge.com/Archives-Museums-and-Collecting-Practices-in-the-Modern-Arab-World/Mejcher-Atassi-Schwartz/p/book/9781138279681
- Writing a 'Tool for Change': 'Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, ed. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies vol. 7 (2007).
https://www.academia.edu/37031364/Writing_A_Tool_for_Change_Abd_al_Rahman_Munif_Remembered_ed_Sonja_Mejcher_Atassi
- Helmut Mejcher, Fusul min tarikh al-sharq al-awsat (articles by Helmut Mejcher translated into Arabic and presented to him for his 80th birthday), ed. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Beirut: Dar al-Tanweer, 2017.
https://www.academia.edu/33783892/fusul_min_tarikh_al_sharq_al_awsat_articles_by_Helmut_Mejcher_translated_into_Arabic_ed_Sonja_Mejcher_Atassi_Beirut_Dar_al_Tanweer_2017_
- Helmut Mejcher, Zeithorizonte im Nahen Osten: Studien und Miszellen zur Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (articles by Helmut Mejcher collected and presented to him for his 75th birthday), eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Marianne Schmidt-Dumont, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012.
https://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-11514-0
See https://aub.academia.edu/sonjamejcheratassi
Courses she has taught include:
ENGL 301A Introduction to Bibliography and Research Methods
ENGL 306AD/ARAB351Q Wor(l)ds of Refuge: Literature in an Age of Postmigration
ENGL 306N Word and Image
ENGL 306X The Essay: Histories, Theories, Practices
ENGL 309A World Literature: Arab Modernism
ENGL 309G Telling Middle Eastern Lives
ENGL 311B Literature and Material Culture: Archival Research in the Arab World
ENGL 217 The Novel
ENGL 221 Introduction to Literary Theory
ENGL 233 Introduction to Translation: Histories, Theories, Practices (Arabic–English)
ENGL 242C World Literature: Global Modernism (Focus: Arab World)
ENGL 262 Translating Life Writing (Arabic-English)
ENGL 292 Capstone Seminar for Lit. Majors: Literary Biography