On 20 August 2026, 17:00 UTC, we are excited to welcome Professor Nouri Gana (University of California in Los Angeles/UCLA), who will give the 2026 Annual Lecture of the ICLA, on the topic “Mahmoud Darwish and the Predicament of National Allegory".
Abstract
In Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (In the Presence of Absence, 2006), Darwish asks: “What does it mean for the Palestinian to be a poet and what does it mean for the poet to be Palestinian?” This talk takes its cue from this question to reflect on the evolution of Darwish’s entanglement with the question of Palestine. While Darwish has often been read through the lens of national allegory, I contend that such readings are not merely imposed from without but correspond to a pressure internal to his poetic practice—one that he both inhabits and resists across his oeuvre.
Bio
Nouri Gana is Professor of Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). In addition to Melancholy Acts: Defeat and Cultural Critique in the Arab World (Fordham UP, 2023), his most recent book, he is the author of Signifying Loss: Toward a Poetics of Narrative Mourning (Bucknell UP, 2011 & paperback 2015), and the editor of The Making of the Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects (Edinburgh UP, 2013) as well as The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English (Edinburgh UP, 2013 & paperback 2015). Mahmoud Darwish and the Predicament of National Allegory, the title of this talk, is also the title of his current book project under contract with Cambridge University Press.
If you would like to attend the conference, please register here : https://AILCICLAannuallecture2026.eventbrite.fr