Waïl S Hassan
· ProfessorUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Asian American Studies
Active 1994–2024
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About
Waïl S Hassan is a Professor specializing in Comparative Literature and English at the University of Illinois. He holds affiliations with multiple departments and centers including French & Italian, Spanish & Portuguese, and several area studies centers such as African, Global, Latin American and Caribbean, South Asian and Middle Eastern, European Union, and Translation Studies. He is also connected with the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Hassan earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1998. His research interests encompass Arabic and Arab Diaspora literatures, Arabic intellectual history, comparative literature, transnational studies, postcolonial theory, and translation theory. Currently, his research focuses on the Arabic novel and the literary and cultural relations between the Arab world and the Americas. Throughout his career, Hassan has contributed significantly to the understanding of Arab literary production in a global context, particularly emphasizing the intersections of Arab culture with the Americas and the broader Global South.
Research topics
- History
- Literature
- Sociology
- Art
- Political science
Selected publications
Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature<i>Avant la Lettre</i>
Comparative Literature · 2021-08-26 · 4 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the…
2024-03-21 · 1 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Arabs have left a permanent imprint on Brazil: from the legacy of Muslim Iberia to Arab immigrants since the late nineteenth century and the prominence today of Brazilians of Arab descent in politics, the economy, literature, and culture. Arab Brazil argues that representations of Arab and Muslim immigrants in Brazilian literature and popular culture since the early twentieth century reveal anxieties and contradictions in the country’s ideologies of national identity. The book analyzes…
A GEOPOLÍTICA E OS PARADIGMAS DA LITERATURA COMPARADA AMERICANA
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2018-12-14 · 1 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingO estudo da literatura árabe nos Estados Unidos tem-se submetido a duas lógicas: uma que considera o árabe como uma extensão das necessidades da política externa e outra que alarga o espectro da Literatura Comparada. O boom atual dos estudos árabes é majoritariamente orientado pela necessidade instrumental. O estudo da literatura árabe moderna no âmbito da Literatura Comparada desde a década de 1990 permaneceu de maneira geral confinado ao paradigma Norte-Sul, como um pequeno subitem do pós-colo…
2024-03-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract O escriba de Granada (2014, The Scribe of Granada) by Gilberto Abrão (b. 1943), and Enigmas da primavera (2015, Enigmas of Spring) by João Almino (b. 1950) evoke the memory of al-Andalus to comment on contemporary crises: the Arab Spring uprisings, the emergence of ISIL, the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia, the economic downturn, corruption scandals, and a worsening political impasse in Brazil. Abrão creates a proto-fascist character who descends into madness following his discovery…
2024-04-30
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This chapter investigates the Arab American novel as a transnational, multilingual phenomenon, even in its narrowest sense as the novel written in English by Arab immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Arab immigrant novelists have tended to focus on the home country and/or the experience of coming to America, while most novels by US-born (second- and third-generation) writers have focused on Arab American identity. The Arab American novel responds to a particular kind o…
Frequent coauthors
- 27 shared
Adam Bates
- 10 shared
Riccardo Paccagnella
Carnegie Mellon University
- 9 shared
Wouter Joosen
KU Leuven
- 9 shared
Tara Matthews
- 9 shared
Vanessa Teague
Australian National University
- 9 shared
Ombeline Leclerc-Istria
Regional Municipality of Niagara
- 9 shared
Lorenz Breidenbach
Cornell University
- 9 shared
Nicolas Roels
Université de Toulouse
Education
- 1998
Ph.D., Comparative Literature
University of Illinois System
- 1986
BA (2nd Class Honors/Magna cum laude), English
King Saud University
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