Kurzbiographie

Hanan Natour studierte Arabistik, Islamwissenschaft und Deutsche Philologie an den Universitäten Göttingen und Paris-Sorbonne. Ihr Masterstudium schloss sie 2018 im Fach Modern Middle Eastern Studies an der Universität Oxford ab. Während ihres Studiums war sie Stipendiatin der Studienstiftung und des DAAD. Im Anschluss an ein Einstein-Projektstipendium der Dahlem Research School an der Friedrich-Schlegel-Graduiertenschule für literaturwissenschaftliche Studien, erhielt sie ein Promotionsstipendium der Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw). Ihre Dissertation trägt den Arbeitstitel "Narratives of Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Contemporary Tunisian Arabic Prose" und wird durch Prof. Beatrice Gründler, Prof. Refqa Abu-Remaileh und Prof. Mohamed-Salah Omri betreut. Seit September 2019 arbeitet sie zudem als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin für das ERC Projekt "PalREAD – Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present".

Short bio

Hanan Natour is a PhD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin, supervised by Professors Beatrice Gründler, Refqa Abu-Remaileh, and Mohamed-Salah Omri, and funded by the German Economy Foundation (sdw), as well as a research associate at the ERC-funded project "PalREAD – Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present". She became a member of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies as a pre-doc scholar of the Einstein Foundation. Her doctoral research focuses on "Narratives of Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Contemporary Tunisian Arabic Prose". In 2018, she graduated from the University of Oxford with a Master of Philosophy in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. She holds a Bachelor of Arts both in Arabic Studies and German Literature from the University of Göttingen (Germany), including one year of studying abroad at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Her studies were funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Lehrerfahrung

• Tutorium der arabischen Grammatik für Bachelorstudierende am Seminar für Arabistik/Islamwissenschaft der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (WiSe 2015/16)
• Tutorium der germanistischen Mediävistik für Bachelorstudierende am Seminar für Deutsche Philologie der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (WiSe 2013/14)

Teaching Experience

• Weekly tutorial of Arabic Grammar for BA students at the Department of Arabic, University of Göttingen (Winter Term 2015/16)
• Weekly trutorial of Medieval German for BA students at the Department of German Philology, University of Göttingen (Winter Term 2013/14)

Dissertationsprojekt

In ihrer Dissertation erforscht Hanan Natour Narrative der Befreiung, Emanzipation und Dekolonialität in zeitgenössischen arabischen Prosatexten aus Tunesien, vornehmlich im Zeitraum zwischen der Unabhängigkeit Tunesiens von Frankreich im Jahr 1956 und der Gegenwart. Ihr besonderes Interesse gilt retrospektiven Referenzen auf die postkoloniale tunesische Geschichte in Erzähltexten, die zwischen 1987 und 2017 publiziert wurden.

Forschungsschwerpunkte

• zeitgenössische arabisch- und französischsprachige Literatur des postkolonialen Nordafrika

• der literarische Dialog zwischen Ländern der arabischsprachigen Welt und Europa

• Identität und Alterität

• Temporalität und Geschichtlichkeit

• Mehrsprachigkeit

Doctoral Dissertation

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

My Orcid profile contains a complete, up-to-date list of publications, academic conference papers delivered, and events conceptualised: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3889-6058.

“The Contemporary Tunisian Arabic Novel as a Narrative Genre” delivered at 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)

“Die moderne tunesische Prosa im Dialog zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart” delivered at the 34^th “Deutsche Orientalistentag” (DOT) (09/2022)

“Between Palestine and North Africa: Transnational Literary Networks During the Tunis Period (1982-1994)” delivered at the international workshop “Futures for Palestinian Literature” hosted by the ERC-Project PalREAD, Freie Universität Berlin (07/2022)

Contribution to the multilingual workshop “Writing and Translating with an Accent” delivered at the Cluster of Excellence 2020 “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (05/2022)

“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

Conception and Host of editorial meetings for the co-edited volume on "Modern Tunisian Literatures" with funding from the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership and its "Flexible Funds" Program funded by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) (11/2022)

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)

Organising member of the international workshop “Futures for Palestinian Literature” hosted by the ERC-Project PalREAD, Freie Universität Berlin (07/2022)

Organisation of a workshop series against discrimination at universities, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies with Ayla Satilmis, Workshop: Diversität und Diskriminierungsschutz im Hochschulalltag (Part 1 and Part 2) (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)

PUBLICATIONS

EDITED VOLUMES

• Natour, Hanan / Omri, Mohamed-Salah (eds.). Modern Tunisian Literatures.
Forthcoming.

ACADEMIC ARTICLES

• Natour, Hanan. “Ḥassūna al-Muṣbāḥī: Ḥikāya tūnisiyya,” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon
(2024).
• Natour, Hanan. “Framing Narratives in Muṣṭafā al-Kīlānī’s Mayār (2017): A
Contemporary Tunisian Perspective on Literary Framing Between Theory and
Practice,” ‘Framing Narratives’, ed. Simon Godart , Beatrice Gruendler , Johannes
Stephan. Articulations (2024), URL: https://articulations.temporal-communities.de.
• Abu-Remaileh, Refqa / Natour, Hanan. “A Locus-Less Literature: The Parallel
Geographies of Palestinian Literature during the Tunis Period (1982-1994),” Journal
of Arabic Literature (2024).
• Natour, Hanan. “Charlotte Pardey: Oscillating Bodies – Understanding Tunisian
Society through its Novels (1956–2011),” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (2024).
• Natour, Hanan. “Language Contacts in Arabic Poetry: Patterns of Merging Languages
in the Poetry of Adonis and Fuad Rifka,” META (Middle East - Topics & Arguments)
13 (2019), 77-87.

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

• Interview: Natour, Hanan. “A Homeland in Language: Hanan Natour talks with
Munsif al-Wahaybi” ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 53-8.
• Blog contribution: Natour, Hanan. “Modern Tunisian Literatures: An Interdisciplinary
Workshop in Berlin,” Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin, 20.11.2022, URL:
https://literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/modern-tunisian-literatures/.
• Press release: Natour, Hanan. “Moderne tunesische Literaturen im Fokus,” myscience
(2022), URL:
https://www.myscience.de/news/wire/moderne_tunesische_literaturen_im_fokus-
2022-FUB.
• Report: Natour, Hanan. “Literature and Patterns of Power” (2019), URL:
https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fuberlin.
de/friedrichschlegel/aktivitaeten/summerschool/2019/index.html.

TRANSLATIONS

• Natour, Hanan. “Muhammad Al-Saghir Awlad Ahmad: ” مصعد بإتجاه الھاویة “ and
تونسي، دفعة واحدة، أو لا أكون” “, “Tunisian I am, for once and for all, or else I will not be”
and “Ascending towards the Abyss,” International Poetry Review special issue “The
Arabic Poetry Issue: Revolution & Rebellion,” (2024), 27-34.
• Natour, Hanan. “Munsif al-Wahaybi: Two Poems,” ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 59-
60.