Hala Halim

Associate Professor & Director, Comparative Approaches to the Literatures of Africa, the Middle East, and the Global South (CALAMEGS) Advanced Certificate

Bio

Hala Halim is the author of Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism: An Archive, which interrogates how modern Alexandria was nominated as the cosmopolitan Middle Eastern city par excellence. Arguing that Alexandrian cosmopolitanism is a Eurocentric discourse, the book is a comparative study of literary representations by canonical writers such as C. P. Cavafy, E. M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell as well as the virtually unpublished librettist Bernard de Zogheb. The book sets the European representations in dialogue with Arabic critical, historical and artistic texts to consider alternative and more egalitarian modes of solidarity. Her current project, on postcolonial cosmopolitanism, builds on her article “Lotus, the Afro-Asian Nexus, and Global South Comparatism.” The article addresses the journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings once published by the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association that she has been researching for many years in relation to post-Bandung Third Worldism. Other projects include editing Bernard de Zogheb’s unpublished libretti and a study that develops her previous work on the Egyptian novelist and critic Edwar al-Kharrat.

Areas of Research/Interest

Modern Arabic, English and Anglophone literatures; postcolonial theory; cosmopolitanism; Mediterraneanism and Levantinism; South-South comparatism; Nahda and comparative modernities; Translation Studies; travel literature; globalization; urban cultures

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles; M.A., American University in Cairo; B.A., Alexandria University

Awards

October 1, 2021-February 1, 2022: Research Fellowship with the American Research Center in Egypt, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

American Comparative Literature Association 2014 Honorable Mention for the Harry Levin Prize for Best First Book in Comparative Literature for Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism: An Archive

Clamor of the Lake recipient of Egyptian State Incentive Award 2006 for Literary Translation; runner up for the first London-based Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation

Humanities Initiative Faculty Fellowship, NYU, 2008-09.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003-05.

Academic Editorial and Advisory Positions

  • Member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Global South Studies, a digital scholarship project supported by the University of Virginia's Mellon Global South Initiative in collaboration with The Global South journal
  • Guest editor, special issue on “Literature and Journalism,” issue 37 (2017) of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, the double-blind peer-reviewed journal published in both Arabic and English by the American University in Cairo
  • Member of the Editorial Board of Modernism/modernity, the official journal of the Modernist Studies Association

Publications

Books:

  • Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism: An Archive (Fordham University Press, 2013). Arabic translation, revised and annotated by the author, published by the National Center for Translation, Egyptian Ministry of Culture, 2023.
  • Heads Ripe for Plucking, an English translation of Mahmoud Al-Wardani’s novel Awan al-Qitaf, with a Translator’s Afterword, American University in Cairo Press, 2008
  • Clamor of the Lake, an English translation of Mohamed El-Bisatie’s award-winning novel Sakhab al-Buhayra, American University in Cairo Press, 2004; paperback edition 2008

Selected Articles and Book Chapters:

  • “A commune of letters; or, anthologizing Afro-Asian poetry,” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Culture, ed. Toral Jatin Gajarawala, Neelam Srivastava, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, and Jack Webb. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. 133-151.
  • “‘A Theatre—or, More Aptly, a Laboratory’: India in the 1940s Egyptian Left as an Antecedent of Bandung Internationalism,” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 59, no. 1 (2022): 49-76 (here)
  • "The people’s wisdom’ and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution: folklore, colloquial poetry, and subalternity in Shaima’ al-Sabbagh’s praxis,” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 15, no. 3 (2021) (article)
  • “Cavafy as an Egyptiote,” boundary 2, “Cavafy Dossier,” vol. 48, no. 2 (2021): 123-160 (article).
  • “Translating Solidarity: An Interview with Nehad Salem,” Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory 3.1 (2020): 131-147 (article).
  • "Bandung at 65, and the Afro-Asian movement's later years," Ahram Online, 29 April, 2020. (here)
  • “The pre-postcolonial and its enduring relevance: Afro-Asian variations in Edwar al-Kharrat’s texts.” In Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Neocolonial Present, ed. Monika Albrecht. New York: Routledge, 2019. 79-95. (Here)
  • “Alexandria--and its ‘cosmopolitanism’--encore et toujours,” Politics/Letters, September 17, 2018 (article).
  • “Scope for Comparatism: Internationalist and Surrealist Resonances in Idwar [Edwar] al-Kharrat’s Resistant Literary Modernity.” In Arabic Humanities, Islamic Thought: Essays in Honor of Everett K. Rowson, ed. Joseph E. Lowry and Shawkat M. Toorawa. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 425-468.
  • "Afro-Asian Third-Worldism into Global South: The Case of Lotus Journal." In Global South Studies. November 22, 2017. Solicited. (article)
  • “Intermediality and Cultural Journalism: Ahmed Morsi,” introduction and interview, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, special issue on “Literature and Journalism,” no. 37 (2017): 288-312.
  • “Ahmed Fouad Negm: ‘Speaking Truth to Power.’” In I Say My Words Out Loud: Ahmed Fouad Negm. Amsterdam: Prince Claus Fund, 2013. Solicited by the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development on the 2013 Principal Prince Claus Award recipient, Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm
  • “Lotus, the Afro-Asian Nexus, and Global South Comparatism,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 32, no. 3 (2012): 563-83
  • “Miramar: A Pension at the Intersection of Competing Discourses,” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Naguib Mahfouz, ed. Waïl Hassan and Susan Muaddi Darraj, Modern Language Association of North America, 2012: 184-201
  • “Latter-day Levantinism, or ‘Polypolis’ in the Libretti of Bernard de Zogheb,” California Italian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (2010): 1-43. (article)
  • “Forster in Alexandria: Gender and Genre in Narrating Colonial Cosmopolitanism,” Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, vol. 4, nos. 2-3 (2006): 237-273
  • “Continental drift,” an interview with Nadine Gordimer, Al-Ahram Weekly, 7-13 December, 2006. (article)
  • “Mahfouz on Mahfouz,” translations of extracts from statements by Naguib Mahfouz, Al-Ahram Weekly, 31 August-6 September, 2006. (article)
  • “Victoria into Victory,” a chapter in Victoria College: A History Revealed, American University in Cairo Press, 2002: 187-243