Hello everyone,

I am also glad that the MLA is reconfiguring its divisions and area studies, but I have misgivings about the new proposed groupings. First, I don’t see in what way the new structure is not euro-centric. If you look at the Western lit. groups, they have multiple subgroups and in many ways they retain their old structure and number…[Read more]

I agree and disagree: The MLA has been on a years’ long campaign to atomize it’s whiteness, with the election of underrepresented ethnicities and disciplines to governing bodies — both Shaden and I have been elected to the DA. I was elected to the EC and will serve until 2016. With that seat at the table, I have proposed internationalizing our d…[Read more]

Dear All,

As I Comparative Literature PhD student who works on both Persian and Arabic (but admittedly much more on Persian), I just want to draw your attention to the fact that Persian is completely absent from this new, revised organizational structure.  (We also were not included in the previous organizational structure either). I…[Read more]

I really appreciate the chance to think through this question with colleagues who work in the field/s of Arabic literature and appreciate the comments by Stephen this morning. I really agree with the point that we should think carefully about splitting into more groups–even if on one level they seem to make more sense in terms of some…[Read more]

I certainly appreciate the efforts of the MLA to open spaces of representation for fields and sub-fields that are often immersed in larger configurations. Indeed, classical Arabic, in the context of the MLA, is submerged within Arabic, which tends to be modern.

The problem with parsing two different groups is that, at this point, Arabic studies…[Read more]

I am enjoying the discussion so far and will respond to a couple of points and questions:

1. Interesting point that we talk about Arabic texts as if they are more unified than they are, but as Mohammed points […]

Dear Katherine, thank you for bringing up an important point. The politics of selecting certain texts to be translated and marketed in the West is rather interesting, and I think a good number of scholars have […]

These are all great questions and I too have been enjoying the discussion! As someone not in Middle East Studies (rather an interdisciplinary Humanities program which is working on infusing more M.E. content into […]

Alf  salaam ya colleagues,

And thank you, Samer, for initiating this increasingly interesting discussion! I couldn’t agree more with Stephen’s comments. The study of Arabic literature (in the United States at […]