Licit Magic — Newsletter of the Global Literary Theory Project (GlobalLit)
Welcome to the First Licit Magic Newsletter
Check out all the latest news from the Global Literary Theory project and find out more on our project blog and our Medium publication, Global Literary Theory (which we still need to update — we will be migrating material from the blog to the Medium publication soon).
Multilingualism and Islamic Literary Theory
On 15th March 2019, Professor Rebecca Ruth Gould, Director of the Global Literary Theory project, delivered a lecture about her ERC-funded project Global Literary Theory at the India International Centre, New Delhi. You can listen to a recording of that lecture via YouTube here.
Welcome to Hadel Jarada!
Hadel joins the project as Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Translator (Arabic Literary Theory & Poetics) from Harvard University where she is soon to receive her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Poetry from the project
We are publishing on our project blog the translation of a poem by Daghestani author Hasan al-Alqadari by GlobalLIT postdoc Kristof D’Hulster. The translation is taken from al-Alqadari’s Kitāb Āthār, p. 251.
Interview with Bakir Mohammad, PhDc Theology & Religious Studies, University of Glasgow
We asked Bakir about his studies, his work with the Global Lit Project and his other interests.
A Brief History of Azeri (Ādharī ) Turkic Poetics
Aida Gasimova Professor of Arabic Literature, Baku State University has provided our first blog article.
Congratulations to Michelle Quay
We are very pleased for our Research Fellow, Michelle Quay that she has secured an exciting new position at the University of Columbia as Assistant Instructional Professor. Michelle still remains a valued associate of the project.
Latest publications
Publications from the team and other associates
K. D’hulster. Browsing through the Sultan’s Bookshelves. Towards a Reconstruction of the Library of the Mamluk Sultan Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 906–922/1501–1516). Forthcoming in the Mamluk Studies series (Bonn University Press)
K. D’hulster, “Khushqadam, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir”, in K. Fleet et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam (2020).
K. D’hulster, “The Road to the Citadel as a Chain of Opportunity. Mamluks’ Careers between Contingency and Institutionalization”, in J. Van Steenbergen (ed.), Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia. Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences (Brill, 2020).
New scholarship
Michael Pifer, Kindred Voices: A Literary History of Medieval Anatolia (Yale University Press, 2021)
Lara Harb, Arabic Poetics. Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, 2020)
B. Alkan & Ç. Günay-Erkol, eds. Turkish Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2020)
New works in translation
Nizami Ganjavi, Layli and Majnun, trans. Dick Davis (Penguin, 2021)
al-Hariri, Impostures, trans. Michael Cooperson (New York University Press, Library of Arabic Literature, 2020)
Get involved in GlobaLit !
Like to write a book review for the Global Lit project or get involved in some other way? Are you interested in translating from Persian, Arabic, Turkic, Urdu, or any Arabic script language? Fill in form and see ‘Latest publications’ for book ideas. Here is a link to our signup form.
Our #balagha_bayts series on twitter
‘Māh bāshad chun rakhat gar māh bāshad sabz-i khaṭ Dur chu dandānat bavad gar durj-i ān bāshad laʿl ‘ A Persian example of a tashbīh-i mashrūṭ (conditional simile), cited in Sürūrī (d. 1561–62), Baḥru’l-Maʿārif
See more on twitter
Useful websites
Global Literary Theory Project
Licit Magic — the Global Literary Theory Project Blog