The 1st Honeyman Conference report
Sunday 30 September 2012
The 1st Honeyman Conference “At the Crossroads of Arabic Literature: The Arabic Literary Heritage in the Context of World Literature” took place in Parliament Hall, St Andrews, on 27-29 September 2012. The conference was organised by the Department of Arabic in the School of Modern Languages.
The main objective of the conference was to investigate the history of Arabic literature in its relation to other literary traditions. The participants of the conference came from eleven different countries in Europe, North America and the Middle East, making it a truly international event. Also the diversity of the academic profiles of the participants, ranging from PhD candidates to experienced and internationally renowned scholars of Arabic studies proved fruitful and inspiring.
The conference opened with a keynote lecture by Professor Ken Seigneurie, Director of the World Literature Program at the Simon Fraser University Surrey, Canada. In his lecture entitled “Arabic Literature in World Literature: (Still) Pointing Incredulously at Death,” Professor Seigneurie highlighted major theoretical challenges in world literature studies and emphasised the importance of approaching Arabic literature and culture, past and present, in the context of world literature.
During the five sessions of the conference, twenty papers were presented on various subjects of Arabic literary and cultural history. The thematic scope of the presentations ranged from theoretical aspects of the reception of such works as A Thousand and One Nights in European literature to an investigation of the classical Arabic poetic heritage and its adaptation in early modern and contemporary Arabic literature. The history of the Arabic literary tradition was explored in the context of cultural interactions from its origins in Late Antiquity throughout the classical period up to the Nahda period (the nineteenth century Arab cultural renaissance) and contemporary times. Various genres of literary production in Arabic including classical and modern literary theory, poetry, religious literature, pop culture, the maqamat and the novel were discussed within the framework of world literature. The fourth session of the conference, “Northern Lights”, was devoted to literary exchanges and interactions between Arabic and Russian and Swedish literary traditions in particular.
Despite an impressive variety of topics and the ambitious chronological scope, the conference remained thematically coherent due to the exceptionally high quality of all presentations, which addressed the field of Arabic literature from different yet interconnected perspectives around the common denominator of world literature.
The outcome of the conference exceeded the expectations of participants and convenors alike. Apart from becoming an intellectually fascinating and stimulating event, the conference contributed significantly to the promotion of the University of St Andrews as one of the leading centres of comparative studies on Arabic literature and represented an important step towards the establishment of a sustainable international research network in the field of Arabic studies.
The conference was supported by the Honeyman Foundation. The Honeyman Foundation was set up by the generosity of A.M. (Sandy) Honeyman, a former Professor in the University of St Andrews, and was established in 1985 with the aim of encouraging education and research, primarily in Middle Eastern languages and cultures.