The Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, organises a mini-series on Remnants of the Iraq Wars: Iraqi Literature Twenty Years after 9/11

7 September 2021 – Iraq: Corporeality & Memory. Iraqi literature, 20 years after 9/11 (16.00-18.15)

22 September 2021 – Aftermath Bodies: Corporeality in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction (16.00-17.30).

Both events are online, via Zoom. Attendance is free, but booking is essential.

Iraq: Corporeality & Memory. Iraqi literature, 20 years after 9/11 (7 September 2021, 16.00 – 18.15 BST)

The aftermath of September 11th 2001, which brought about the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq, also led the destruction of the Iraqi state and its social structure. Authors, translators and scholars Sinan Antoon, Dunya Mikhail, Adnan Al-Sayegh, Jenny Lewis, and Haytham Bahoora meet to read from their work and discuss how Iraq in contemporary literature ‘writes back’ in the face of destruction and assaults on culture.

The discussion addresses notions of corporeality and memory in terms of both the body of the text – a space for experimentation and venture into new genres and trends – and as the literary representations of the body – which can be read as a technique of epistemic disobedience establishing anticolonial redefinitions of gender, self, beauty, and pain.

Chaired by Hanan Jasim Khammas, Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the CCL.

For more information on the speakers and to book, click here. 

Mònica Rius-Piniés, member of ADHUC, is one of the expert consultants of the CCL at Goldsmiths.