Gil Anidjar

Between Arab and Jew, what is literature? The premises of literary history make it difficult to analyze literary traditions that transcend national, linguistic, religious, and generic boundaries. Although comparisons and relations between Hebrew and Arabic, between poetry and philosophy, have been examined by many scholars, attempts to map the larger boundaries that link, separate, and make sense of the rhetorical difficulties involved remain rare. Gil Anidjar will offer a sketch of what such a map might look like and provide elements of a solution, if not resolution.

Gil Anidjar is assistant professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia, specializing in comparative literature, Arab-Jewish relations, Hebrew and Jewish culture, and post-colonialism. He is the author of Our Place in Al-Andalus: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters (2002) and, most recently, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (2003)