“Poems of Pain and Desire Translating from Arabic in the Feminine”

Adnan Kassar School of Business Room 903, Beirut campus

The B.A. Program in Arabic Language and Literature at the Department of Humanities is hosting a lecture on “Poems of Pain and Desire Translating from Arabic in the Feminine” on Monday, November 30. 

The lecture will be given by Rula Abi Saad and Michelle Hartman from McGill University.

Rula Abisaab is an associate professor of Islamic History at McGill University in Montreal. She has two collections of poetry; Ghilāf al-Qalb (The Heart’s Peel) published by Dar Nelson and  Ka-Laylā aw Ka-al-Mudun al-Khams (Like Layla or Like the Five Cities) published by Dar al-Farabi. A number of her poems were translated by Michelle Hartman from Arabic into English, and also into French by Lebanese Francophone poet Nadine Ltaif.  She also published several essays and articles on Arab fiction and poetry. Her non-Fiction works have examined relations of religion and power in Safavid Iran and modern Arab Shiite societies. 

Michelle Hartman is associate professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University in Montreal and a literary translator. She has mainly translated the works of Lebanese women writers into English, including  Alexandra Chreiteh’s Always Coca-Cola and Ali and His Russian Mother and Iman Humaydan’s Wild Mulberries, Other Lives, and the Weight of Paradise as well as the poems of Rula Jurdi Abisaab. Her newest translation is a collection of short stories, Beirut Noir. Her current research explores the connections between the theory and practice of translation.