Hanan Natour
Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik
Fachrichtung Arabistik
Research Associate – ERC project PalREAD
ERC-Project PalREAD
Current Position
| Since 2019 | Research Associate (Praedoc) at the ERC-funded project “PalREAD – Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present”, Freie Universität Berlin |
Education
| 2019 | Visiting Researcher at the University of Tunis |
| Since 2018 | Doctoral Candidate in Arabic Studies, supervised by Prof. Refqa Abu-Remaileh, Prof. Beatrice Gründler and Prof. Mohamed-Salah Omri |
| Member of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies | |
| 2016 - 2018 | Master of Philosophy in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford |
| Master thesis “Transcending the Nation: Dimensions of Postcolonial Tunisian Identity in the Poetry of Munṣif al-Wahāybī” (distinction) | |
| 2012 - 2016 | Bachelor of Arts in Arabic and Islamic Studies and German Philology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (distinction) |
| Bachelor thesis “Identity and Alterity in Contemporary Arabic Poetry: An Analysis of the Engagement with the “West” in poems of Maḥmūd Darwīš, Adūnīs und Fuʾād Rifqa” (distinction) | |
| 2014 - 2015 | Visiting Student at Université Paris-Sorbonne |
Awards
| 2022 | 2022 Dahlem Junior Host Program (workshop funding) |
| 2019 | PhD Scholarship of the German Economy Foundation (Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft) |
| 2018 - 2019 | Einstein Project Scholarship of the Dahlem Research School, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, Freie Universität Berlin |
| 2013 - 2018 | Scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) |
| 2016 - 2018 | Graduate Scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) |
Professional Experience
| 2019 | Employee at the German Institute for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM): Processing data and translating and interviews with Syrian Refugees in Turkey |
| 2017 - 2018 | Graduate Training Assistant at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford: represented graduate students in the Joint Consultative Committee, organised doctoral seminars and methodology days |
| Founder and President of the Oxford University World Literature Society: organised termly literary readings and a multilingual literary salon | |
| 2016 | Tutor for the Islamic Studies Colloquium, University of Göttingen |
| 2015 - 2017 | Member of the Humanities Academy, German National Academic Foundation: Interdisciplinary Discussion of texts concerning “Transcendence and Community” |
| 2015 - 2016 | Student Assistant for Prof. Sebastian Günther, director of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Göttingen |
| Tutor for Arabic Grammar, University of Göttingen: teaching weekly training sessions for BA students | |
| 2013 - 2014 | Student Assistant for Akram Bishr, lecturer of Arabic, University of Göttingen |
| Tutor for Medieval German, University of Göttingen: teaching weekly training sessions for BA students | |
| 2013 |
Student Assistant for Prof. Tilmann Köppe at the Courant Research Center “Text Structures”, University of Göttingen |
| Summer Academy of the German National Academic Foundation “Outlaws in Law and Literature” |
In her doctoral thesis, Hanan Natour researches narratives of liberation, emancipation, and decoloniality in contemporary Tunisian Arabic prose, mainly between the Tunisian independence from France in 1956 and the present time. She focuses on retrospective references to postcolonial Tunisian history in narrative texts published between 1987 and 2017.
Research Interests
- contemporary Arabic and Francophone literature in postcolonial North Africa
- literary dialogues between Arab countries and Europe
- identity and alterity
- temporality and historicity
- multilingualism
Conference Papers / Wissenschaftliche Vorträge
“Salma Khadra Jayyusi as a Literary Critic” delivered at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) (01/2022)
“Narratives of Space: Urban vs. Rural Space in Contemporary Tunisian Prose”
delivered at “Colloque international: Les représentations paysagères dans les littératures du monde arabe et du Proche-Orient” (INALCO, CERMOM, Sorbonne) (10/2021)
"الكاتب التونسي مصطفى الكيلاني: كاتب النص وقارئ التاريخ" خلال المدرسة الصيفية الدولية الثنائية اللغة التي تنظمها الأكاديمية العربية الألمانية للباحثين الشباب (AGYA) بعنوان "بحثًا عن القارئ: مقاربات جديدة لممارسات القراءة ووظائفها وتواريخها في الأدب والفنون والإعلام والثقافة العربية" (08/2021)
“Narrating the Past: Tunisian Prose and the Uprisings of 2010/11” delivered at the Annual Conference “Knowledge, Power, and Middle Eastern Studies”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2021)
“Translation and Transmission: A Literary Case Study of French and Arabic in Postcolonial Tunisia” delivered at the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Conference “Translational Spaces: Language, Literatures, Disciplines” (02/2020)
“Lesarten des Skandals in Hassouna Mosbahis Ḥikāya tūnisīya (“A Tunisian Tale”)” delivered at the Annual Conference “Eskalation! Skandal in der Literatur und in den Künsten”, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (10/2019)
“Tunisian Arabic Poetry amidst the 2011 Uprisings: Munsif Al-Wahaybi and Awlad Ahmed” delivered at the Summer School “The Politics of Literature - Literature and Politics”, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (07/2019)
“Dimensions of Nation, Memory and Identity in Contemporary Tunisian Poetry” delivered at the Annual Conference “Joining the Dots: Interdisciplinarity in Middle East Studies”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (06/2019)
“Identity and Alterity in Contemporary Arabic Poetry: Perspectives towards the “West” in poems of Maḥmūd Darwīš, Adūnīs and Fuʾād Rifqa” delivered at the Annual Conference “Movement and Migration in the Middle East: People and Ideas in Flux”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2017)
“Identity and Alterity in the Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish: Challenging Boundaries in the Context of Occupation” delivered at the Oxford Graduate Conference “Crossings: Negotiating Borders and Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean”, University of Oxford (04/2017)
Events / Veranstaltungskonzeption
Conception and Host of the workshop “Modern Tunisian Literatures” funded by the Dahlem Junior Host Program 2022 at Freie Universität Berlin and co-hosted by Professor Mohamed-Salah Omri, University of Oxford (09/2022)
Organisation of a Workshop against Discrimination at Universities, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies with Ayla Satilmis (02-03/2022)
Panel Conception & Chair of the Panel “Narrating Upheaval in North Africa” at the Annual Conference “Knowledge, Power, and Middle Eastern Studies”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2021)
Co-organisation of the Annual Conference “Borrowed Wor(l)ds: Aneignung jenseits des Anführungszeichens”, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, (10/2021)
Conception & Chair of the Reading Group “Epistemologies of the ‘Global South’”, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (Winter Term 2019/2020)
Response delivered at the Online Workshop “Framing Narratives: New Perspectives on Premodern Textual Production in Arabic”, Freie Universität Berlin (11/2020)
Active Member and Host of several Sessions of the Anonym Classic Reading Group “Framing Narratives”, Freie Universität Berlin (2020 - 2022)
Co-organisation of the Summer School “The Politics of Literature - Literature and Politics”, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (07/2019)
Organisation and Moderation of Literary Readings with Yousef Qasmiyeh, Claire Trévien, Khalid Lyamlahi and about Jawdat Haydar & Host of a Multilingual Literary Salon, Oxford University World Literature Society (2017 - 2018)
Articles
- Natour, Hanan. “Language Contacts in Arabic Poetry: Patterns of Merging Languages in the Poetry of Adonis and Fuad Rifka.” In: META (Middle East – Topics & Arguments) 13 (2019).
- Natour, Hanan. “A Homeland in Language: Hanan Natour talks with Munsif al-Wahaybi.” In: ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 53-8.
Translations
- Al-Wahaybi, Munsif. “Two Poems”, translated from Arabic by Hanan Natour. In: ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 59-60.