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Our Oracle-Ruin: The Arabic Literary Tradition in light of Gaza

In the moment of genocide, in the silence that follows the massacre, Gaza becomes a language, a lens, an interrogation, a refutation of all that came before, and a compass for all that comes after. What good is the Arabic language if it does not dedicate itself to encompassing—no matter how impossible—the magnitude of the tragedy in Gaza? And how can the Arabic literary tradition remain dynamic and alive if it does not rally its voices, past and present, dead and alive, to account for this counterpoint in history that is Gaza? This presentation launches from the murdered Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada’s poem, “O How Alone We Are!” to examine examples from a long Arabic legacy of confronting time and its calamities with defiant “alone-ness.”

HUDA J. FAKHREDDINE is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Her creative writings include a work of creative non-fiction, Zaman s̩aghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun), Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, in 2019 and the forthcoming collection Wa min thamma al-ʿālam… (And then the World!), Manushrat Marfa’, Beirut, 2025. She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and an editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.

PATH+ is a research group that considers new directions for the studies of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew languages, literatures, and cultures. 

This is event is co-sponosored by the Abbasi Program of Islamic Studies, CCSRE (the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity), the Middle East Studies Forum by ������ý Global Studies, and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.