Sonja Mejcher-Atassi

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
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Born	(1972-08-08) August 8, 1972 Tübingen
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Occupation	Writer Cultural historian

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (born 8 August 1972 in Tübingen) is a writer and a cultural historian. She is currently Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at the American University of Beirut.

Education and career

Mejcher-Atassi received her MA from the Free University of Berlin in 2000, and her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2005. She joined the American University of Beirut’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2005/2006. In 2017/18, she was an invited resident fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Research

Mejcher-Atassi’s research focuses on modern Arabic literature in global perspective and closely intersects with cultural and intellectual history. Interdisciplinary in scope, it engages with memory studies, life writing/(auto)biography, literature archives and writers’ libraries, gender studies, global modernism, interrelations of word and image, book culture/art, and aesthetics and politics.

Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (Reichert 2012) draws on interarts studies to chart new approaches to the study of modern Arabic literature. It focuses on three literary writers and their rapport with visual art: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Abd al-Rahman Munif, and Etel Adnan.

Geschichten über Geschichten: Erinnerung im Romanwerk von Elias Khoury (Reichert 2001) explores the role of literature and memory in times of political crisis, focusing on Elias Khoury’s novels written during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90).

The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers (Cambridge University Press 2021) is the first English-language book to provide a clear sense of the significance and complexity of Saadallah Wannous’ life and work. The book exemplifies “the role of cultural production—especially dramatic literature—in providing a portrait of and shaping a culture in the throes of profound transformation."

Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and May Muzaffar (Skira 2016) traces Rafa Nasiri’s trajectory as a graphic artist, his journey from Baghdad to Beijing in the late 1950s, as well as his artistic engagement with different traditions of works on paper from across the Arab world, China, and Europe.

Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz (Ashgate 2012) “is a pioneering book that sheds light on a wide-ranging view of collecting practices in the Arab world,” writes the Palestinian artist and critic Kamal Boullata, providing a vital source for “readers interested in the cultural history of the region, the origins of modernity and the making of a national identity”

Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, a special issue of MIT’s Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies edited by Mejcher-Atassi in 2007, pays tribute to ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif, described by Sabry Hafez as an "Arabian master" in the art of the novel. Munif was also a distinguished intellectual and an expert in petroleum economics. The volume includes a newly translated essay Munif wrote on the Iraqi artist Jewad Selim and his Monument of Freedom.

Awards

Mejcher-Atassi is the recipient of the 2021 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Reimar Lüst Research Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange and the 2008 Annemarie Schimmel Research Award.

Publications

Mejcher-Atassi has authored and edited several notable works in her field. Below is a list of her publications:

Authored books

• An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948, New York: Columbia University Press (Religion, Culture, and Public Life), 2024. [1]
• Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2012. [2]
• Geschichten über Geschichten: Erinnerung im Romanwerk von Elias Khoury, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2001. [3]

Edited volumes

• 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. [4]
• Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and May Muzaffar, Milan: Skira, 2016. [5]
• Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. [6]
• Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, ed. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies vol. 7 (2007). [7]
• 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. [8]
• 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. [9]

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