Franck Salameh from Boston College will give a lecture entitled "Language and Identity Formation in the Middle East: The Case of Arabic" on Tuesday at 7PM in Herter 301.
Elie Kedourie--a pillar of modern Middle East Studies--once described
his academic field as a "bore," a narrative that claimed there to be
no non-Arab "others" in the Middle East, and no cultures, languages,
or histories beyond those of Arabs. This talk seeks to unpack these
prevalent assumptions, parse the language and ideologies behind them,
and demonstrate that despite its many religious, cultural, and
linguistic similarities, the modern Middle East--like its ancient Near
East precursor--lacks the requisite historical uniformity and
continuity to warrant the reductive--and ultimately
misleading--appellation "Arab world."
Franck Salameh is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Arabic,
and Hebrew in the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and
Literatures at Boston College. This talk is partly based on his new
book, Language, Memory and Identity in the Middle East: The Case of
Lebanon (Lexington Books, 2010).
