You are warmly invited to our third webinar of this term by Dr Amal Eqeiq (Williams College) organised by the Department of Comparative Literature at King's College London. The webinar will be chaired by Dr Anna Bernard (KCL) and take place on Wednesday, March 16th, 4.30-6pm (GMT) Click here to join the meeting.

In this talk, Eqeiq reflects on some of the methodological challenges that a comparatist encounters in conceptualizing literary studies of international solidarity and South-South dialogues across languages and cultures that have not been studied together. From murals of resistance in Chiapas, Mexico to metaphors of resilience in Palestine, she explores the political affinities between Tzotzil and Arabic and asks: How do we compare what seems incomparable?

Speaker:

Amal Eqeiq is an assistant professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington with a dissertation entitled: “Writing the Indigenous: Contemporary Mayan Literature in Chiapas, Mexico and Palestinian Literature in Israel.” She contributed articles, a book chapter, essays and translations to Contemporary Levant Journal, The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History, Journal of Palestine Studies, Transmotion: An Online Journal of Postmodern Indigenous Studies, Jadaliyya and MadaMasr. Her research interests include: modern Arab literature, popular culture, Palestine Studies, feminism(s), performance studies, translation, indigenous studies in the Americas, literature of the Global South, literary history, hip-hop, critical border studies, decoloniality, and creative writing. She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including a writing residency at Hedgebrook: Women Authoring Change, the Dean’s Medal in Humanities from the University of Washington, and PARC NEH/FPIRI research fellowship among others. In 2019-2021 she was in Berlin as an Associate Fellow at the Europe in the Middle East- the Middle East in Europe (EUME), a multi-disciplinary research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Lateinamerika-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. Amal is currently completing her manuscript Indigenous Affinities: Comparative Study in Mayan and Palestinian Narratives. When she pops up on social media, she writes her series “Diaries of a Hedgehog Feminist.”