On the evening of February 14, 2025, we will hold a seminar at the Hongo Satellite of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies with Prof. Shawkat Toorawa, an American scholar of Arabic literature, as our guest speaker. Please come and join us.

In contrast to the secular and progressive trends of the second half of the twentieth century, Arabic literary works quote from the Qur’an and allude to its stories. In this seminar, we will deepen our discussion of how authors of Arabic literature interact with sacred text. This will be illustrated with the story of Noah and the Qur’an’s so-called “mysterious letters.”

Lecturer: Prof. Shawkat Toorawa
Commentator: Dr. Kaoru Yamamoto (Keio University)
Moderator: Dr. Hiroki Okazaki (Asia University)

Speakers:

Shawkat M. Toorawa is Brand Blanshard Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His books include a study of the ninth-century Baghdad bookman, Ibn Abi Tahir; a co-edited reference work on Arabic literary culture from 500 to 925 ; an edition and collaborative translation of a short 13th-century collection of women’s biographies; an edition and translation, A Time Between Ashes and Roses, by the contemporary Syro-Lebanese poet, Adonis; and The Devotional Qur’an: Beloved Surahs and Verses. He is co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Qur’anic Studies on ‘The Qur’an and World Literature,’ and of a special issue of The Muslim World on ‘Anglophone Muslim Women Writing.‘ An edited collection on the literary dimensions of the Qur’an is forthcoming. He is an executive editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.

Kaoru YAMAMOTO is Associate Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University. Having received her PhD in Literature from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies on A Study of Ṣaʿālīk (brigand-poets) in Pre-Islamic Arabia: heroes in inverted world in 2002. She has translated many works, including those of Emile Habiby and Adania Shibli into Japanese. She was nominated as a judge for The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2014.

Hiroki OKAZAKI is a specialist of contemporary Arab political thought and literature, and Assistant Professor at Department of International Relations in Asia University, Tokyo. His current research interests are mainly in two fields: The conceptual history of the Arab-Islamic world, especially as presented by the Nahda thinkers since the middle of nineteenth century; The cultural resistance against the authoritarianism in contemporary Syria, including political thought, literary works and documentary films. He is the author of The Arab Critique of Despotism in the Modern Age: Between Orientalism and “Orientalism in Reverse” (Tokyo University Press, 2021).