Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Biography
I joined the University of Oxford in 2026/27 after more than twenty years at the American University of Beirut, where I served as a professor in the Departments of English and of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages, as well as director of the Center for Arts and Humanities. I was also a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (2017/18). I hold a DPhil in Modern Arabic Literature from the University of Oxford and an MA in Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature from the Free University of Berlin.
Research Interests
- Modern Arabic literature
- Modern and contemporary art of the Middle East
- Life writing
- Literature archives
- Cultural/intellectual history
Current Projects
- Arab Writers’ Literary Records: Archives and Questions (1850 to the Present) AWRAQ اوراق
Recent Publications
Authored books
-
An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948, New York: Columbia University Press (Religion, Culture, and Public Life), 2024. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/an-impossible-friendship/9780231560443
-
Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2012. https://reichert-verlag.de/media/Prospekte/Litkon_2014.pdf
-
Geschichten über Geschichten: Erinnerung im Romanwerk von Elias Khoury, Wiesbaden: Reichert (Literatures in Context), 2001. https://reichert-verlag.de/media/Prospekte/Litkon_2014.pdf
Edited volumes
-
Beirut, special issue, Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte Heft XVIII/4 Winter 2024, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Daniel Schönpflug (Munich: C.H. Beck). https://www.wiko-berlin.de/en/wikotheque/zeitschrift-fuer-ideengeschichte/issue/beirut
-
The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre), 2021. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-theatre-of-sadallah-wannous/15C4A203FC765A1F33339B9CD2A0551D#fndtn-information
-
Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and May Muzaffar, Milan: Skira, 2016. https://www.skira.net/en/books/rafa-nasiri-1/
-
Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. https://www.routledge.com/Archives-Museums-and-Collecting-Practices-in-the-Modern-Arab-World/Mejcher-Atassi-Schwartz/p/book/9781138279681
- Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered, ed. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies vol. 7 (2007). https://www.academia.edu/37031364/Writing_A_Tool_for_Change_Abd_al_Rahman_Munif_Remembered_ed_Sonja_Mejcher_Atassi
