Sign posts of the streets of the old city of Jerusalem represent the linguistic landscape of the city. This linguistic landscape reflects the fortunes of the city during the last one hundred years. Conflict is the primary force behind this landscape. The lecture will present a macro-level analysis of the moving map of the linguistic landscape of the city during the twentieth and twenty first century and how bottom-up resistance is exercised to counter the hegemony of the occupying power since 1967.
Speaker: Professor Yasir Suleiman
Professor Yasir Suleiman is Emeritus Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge, formerly His Majesty Qaboos Bin Said Professor of Contemporary Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge and the Iraq Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
He is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), the premier prize for the Arabic novel internationally, Member of the Banipal Board for Arab literature, Member of the Board of Trustees of the Gulf Research Centre-Cambridge, and member of the Panel of Judges of the British Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize for Middle Eastern Studies.
Professor Suleiman is former Vice President and Chair of Council of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Former Chair of Judges of the British Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize and former member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Edinburgh (University Court). He is Founding Director of the Centre of Islamic Studies at Cambridge and Founding President and Provost of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He served on many national and international bodies.
Professor Suleiman’s research covers the cultural politics of the Middle East with special focus on identity, conflict, diaspora studies and modernisation in so far as these issues relate to language, modern Arabic literature, translation and memory. He also conducts research in Arabic grammatical theory and the Arabic intellectual tradition in the pre-modern period.
Professor Suleiman is Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (FRCPE) and Ambassador of the University of Sarajevo.
Time: 6pm Amman, 3pm London
This lecture will be hybrid.
To book your online place at this lecture, click here
To attend in person at the Amman Institute, please book your place here
