Arabic Comparative Literature  

The Research Committee on Arabic Comparative Literature aims to facilitate dialogue between Arab and international researchers via the identification and introduction of Arabic contribution to and achievement in the field of comparative literature.

The Committee seeks to promote emerging critical approaches and methods in comparative literary studies that characterize the Arabic cultural scene, such as transculturality: the dialogue of literatures across national borders (and within the same culture), the transregional and transhistorical flow/travel of ideas, concepts, theories, movements across languages and media, and the literatures of moving identities (literature of migration and exile).

Within the inter-meshing frameworks of comparative literature and moving identities studies, the committee aspires to promote the study of Arab diaspora writers, notably expatriates, exiles and the displaced, whose literary production enriches both the Arab tradition and the traditions of the countries to which they emigrated and settled for various reasons. This promising comparative project will provide a space for a viable encounter between Arabic and international practices of comparative literature, both in the East and in the West.

The Committee also seeks to promote interwoven studies that allow the comparison of different fields of studies and different disciplines such as translation studies, and in particular literary translation, within Arabic comparative literature, together with other emerging, developing, or cultivated research interests generated by recent interaction with international advances in literary, critical and digital criticism and creativity. These research interests include but are not limited to trends related to cultural production and industry, intermediality and the visual turn, animation and comics, the tourist imaginary and literary cartography, discursivity, digital humanities, and Artificial Intelligence.

Members of ICLA and Member Associations can become regular members of the Committee and engage in many of its activities: newsletter, journal, online seminars, workshops and symposia as both participants and organizers. Membership and calls for participation will be posted on the committee’s page on the ICLA website and circulated among university programs that include current or prospective ICLA members. The Committee welcomes collaboration with ICLA Member Associations for conferences and symposia on Arabic comparative literature (partnership to organize and promote academic events, pooling expertise for networking, and discussion of critical topics).

The committee encourages early career researchers and post-graduate students in Comparative Literature programs at universities and academic institutions to become active members in the committee’s research development plan (in-progress) for researchers who are working on comparative projects either individually or collaboratively. As members of the Committee, they can engage in many of its aforementioned activities as both participants and organizers.