The William J. Cooper Foundation and the Arabic section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Swarthmore College invite you to “Debris and Diaspora: On Iraqi Culture”, a lecture by Iraqi writer and filmmaker Sinan Antoon

6:00 pm Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Science Center 101

Swarthmore College

Sinan Antoon, associate professor at the Gallatin School of New York University and fellow of the university’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, has authored The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf and many essays on the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book, In the Presence of Absence, was published by Archipelago Books in 2011 and won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association. Antoon is also a poet and a novelist. He has published two collections of poetry in Arabic and one collection in English titled The Baghdad Blues. His novels include I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody and The Corpse Washer, nominated for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His essays and creative writing have appeared in major Arab and international journals and publications, including The Nation, Middle East Report, Banipal, Journal of Palestine Studies, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, Washington Square Journal, and the New York Times. He is co-founder/co-editor of Jadaliyya.

In this lecture, Antoon will give a bird’s-eye view of Iraqi culture today. This lecture asks: What has become of Iraqi cultural production since the invasion and occupation? What are the major dynamics or cultural institutions, if any, regulating or influencing cultural production? What sort of cultural hegemonies are in place? Have the cultural practices of the previous era disappeared or re-emerged under a new guise?