A short seminar series on corporeality in Iraqi literature, organised by Hanan Jasim Khammas, Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the CCL.
The series will include the following two online events – both are free, but booking is essential to receive a link to attend them.
Iraq: Corporeality & Memory. Iraqi literature, 20 years after 9/11 (7 September 2021, 16.00 – 18.15)
The aftermath of September 11th 2001, which brought about the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq, also led the destruction of the Iraqi state and its social structure.
Authors, translators and scholars Sinan Antoon, Dunya Mikhail, Adnan Al-Sayegh, Jenny Lewis, and Haytham Bahoora meet to read from their work and discuss how Iraq in contemporary literature ‘writes back’ in the face of destruction and assaults on culture.
The discussion addresses notions of corporeality and memory in terms of both the body of the text – a space for experimentation and venture into new genres and trends – and as the literary representations of the body – which can be read as a technique of epistemic disobedience establishing anticolonial redefinitions of gender, self, beauty, and pain.
Chaired by Hanan Jasim Khammas.
This event has happened and booking is no longer available.
Aftermath Bodies: Corporeality in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction (22 September 2021, 16.00 – 17.30)
Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, local and diaspora authors have been engaging with new aesthetics of corporeality.
In this seminar, Hanan Jasim Khammas, in discussion with Ikram Masmoudi (University of Delaware) and Hanna Simpson (University of Oxford), will review aspects of corporeality in contemporary Iraqi fiction and shows how new representation of the body suggest a development in the perceptions of the body as a cultural sign.
Chaired by Rita Sakr (Maynooth University).
This event has happened and booking is no longer available.
