Lebenslauf

• 1979 Geburt in Koura, Libanon
• 2003 Bachelor-Abschluss in englischer Literatur an der Libanesischen Universität Beirut
• 2003 Lehrdiplom an der Libanesischen Universität Beirut
• 2010 Master-Abschluss in vergleichender Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Balamand, Libanon
  • Titel der Arbeit (englisch): A comparative study on discourse and identity in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra.
• 2010 Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA, ESOL Level 5), Cambridge, Vereinigtes Königreich
• seit 2017 Mitglied der Forschungsgruppe Dissonant Narratives der Universität Zürich

• 2016 - 2021  Promotion in Arabistik (Ph. D.)
  • Titel der Arbeit (englisch): A study on the Undead and Trauma in post-war Beirut as depicted in the fiction of Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber.
  • Informationen über meine Promotion finden Sie auf der Website der Dissonant Narratives-Forschungsgruppe.

Lehre und Berufserfahrung

•  

  WiSe 2021/22 Universität Münster

  • Seminar "Place and Memory in Arabic Texts and Videos: Between History and Personal Experience" (auf Arabisch)

• SoSe 2021               Universität Münster

  • Seminar   "‘Gender’ and Its Challenges in Arab Societies: Readings and Discussions about Society, Politics, Media and Arts" (auf Arabisch)

• WiSe 2020/21       Universität Münster

  •  

    Seminar   "Was schreiben arabische Journalisten, Wissenschaftler und Intellektuelle über westliche Darstellungen der arabischen Welt?" (auf Arabisch)

• SoSe 2020               Universität Münster

   

  • Seminar   "Zehn Jahre Arabischer Frühling: Politik, Gesellschaft, Medien, Kultur" (auf Arabisch) mit Jun.-Prof.’in Dr. Barbara Winckler

• WiSe 2019/20        Universität Münster
  • Seminar   "Das Atlat-Motiv im urbanen Raum: Krieg, Exil und Wiederaufbau in der libanesischen Literatur" (auf Arabisch) mit Jun.-Prof.’in Dr. Barbara Winckler
• 2016 - 2017           inlingua Sprachschule, Münster
  • Englischdozent verschiedener Niveaus und Altersklassen
  • Konzipierung von Kursmaterialien und Lehrplänen
• 2010 - 2016          Universität Balamand, Libanon
  • Englischdozent und -koordinator verschiedener Niveaus und Altersklassen
  • Konzipierung neuer Module, Programme und Lehrpläne
• 2011 - 2016          Notre Dame Universität, Libanon
  • Englischdozent verschiedener Niveaus und Altersklassen
• 2006 - 2011         International School - Al Koura, Libanon
  • Dozent für Englisch und englische Literatur
  • Aufsicht und Organisation des Model United Nations-Programmes
  • Repräsentation der Schule in zahlreichen Konferenzen und Workshops
• 2003 - 2006         Al Mawakeb School, Vereinigte Arabische Emirate
  • Dozent für Englisch und englische Literatur
  • Partizipation an multinationalen Didaktik-Workshops

Dissertation: The Undead of the Civil War in Rabee Jaber’s Fiction: al-Aṭlāl, the Disappeared, and Fictional Testimonies

Research Abstract
Since the Lebanese civil war resolution in 1990, state-sponsored policies have tried to erase all traces of past crimes while suppressing people’s need to testify to their war traumatic experiences. A group of Lebanese novelists, artists, and film makers responded by creating an intellectual scene to partake in the debate about the past and the present through various cultural, fictional productions. A lot of their works rely on trauma theory, particularly on the notion of the belated return of the repressed past, to challenge the State narrative. Although the Lebanese novel has been predominantly informed by stories of war-related traumatic experiences, only few scholarly works have been devoted to study the aspect of trauma in those novels. The role of the undead remains particularly unaddressed by literary critics despite its prevalence in Lebanese contemporary art and, maybe to a lesser extent, in Lebanese postwar cinema. In this respect, intellectual and artist Jalal Toufic emphasizes the need for Lebanese ghost literature on the undead to help deal with the unfinished business of the traumatic past. With fiction as their only loci, the return of the undead through literature presents a distinct perspective to study traumatic experiences that might have otherwise remained suppressed and maybe forgotten. This study respectively presents a new contribution to the Lebanese literary circle as well as to trauma studies by exploring the relation between the undead and the traumatic experiences as illustrated in three novels by Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber.
The study accordingly refers to trauma as a cultural trope used by Jaber to assume a sovereign return of the past with the power to influence the current state of affairs. It builds on fiction’s potential to invest in trauma theory in order to give voice to Lebanese war survivors who have remained marginalized or to war victims who are no longer here to testify. In this respect, the textual and aesthetic aspects in each the three novels is discussed in a separate chapter that deals with a distinct trauma-related theme from the Lebanese context: The first chapter on Taqrῑr Mehlis (2005; The Mehlis Report, 2013) explores the war over the ruins between Solidere’s reconstruction project and the labyrinthine traumatic aṭlāl in Beirut downtown in 2005. The second chapter on al-I‘tirāfāt (2008; Confessions, 2016) proposes a broader definition of intergenerational trauma through exploring the first person narrative of a disappeared survivor in postwar Beirut. The third chapter on Berytus madῑna taḥt al-arḍ (2005; Berytus a City Underground) explores the fictional acts of testifying and bearing witness to the traumatic mass annihilation of the undead underneath Beirut in 2002.

Pubilkationen

• Konferenzbeiträge

  • 2018         “Intergenerational Trauma in Contemporary Lebanese Fiction and Society.”
    Lecture and Discussion: Winter School. University of Cologne, Orientalisches Seminar. Dec. 6
  • 2018        “The Mehlis Report: Aesthetic Representations of Amnesia in Beirut and the Role of Fiction
    in Resurrecting Trauma.” Conflict and Coexistence. (UEAI). The University of Münster,
    Germany. Sep. 10-14.
  • 2018        “The Form of Amnesia in Beirut in 2005: The Temporality of the Ruins and the Lapses of the
    Consumer Society.” Why Remember? Ruins, Remains, and Reconstructions. (Salem
    University; University of the Arts London; Durham University; Manhattan College; De
    Montfort University). Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. June 27-29
  • 2018        “Rabī Jābir’s al-I‘tirafāt as a New Form of Historical Fiction that Depicts the Spirit of a
    Repressed Past.” Rebirth of the Historical Novel in Arabic. (EURAMAL – European Association for
    Modern Arabic Literature). University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy. May 28-June1.
  • 2017        “Confessions: A Literary Model of Derridean Mourning.” Why Remember? Memory and
    Forgetting in Times of War and Its Aftermath. (PARC University of the Arts; Salem State
    University; WARM Festival). Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. June 30-July 2.
  • 2016        “al-Mawtu ʿamalun shāqq: The Afterlife during the Syrian War.” Upholding Humanity in a
    Post-human World. (EURAMAL – European Association for Modern Arabic Literature).
    University of Oslo, Norway. May 13-4 June.

   

• Fachaufsätze

  • Nassif, Dani. “al-Mawtu ʿamalun shāqq: Death, Corpse, and the Afterlife During the Syrian War.”
    Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World, edited by Stephan Guth and Teresa Pepe, Harrassowitz
    Verlag, 2019, pp. 249-258.