Michael Allan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3586456 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Allan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Allan |
| SIGNATURE | ALLAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1 University of Oregon |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7270-2947 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Language(s) of Self-Representation
This essay tracks Karl Marx's famous line “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented” as it travels from a translated epigraph in Edward Said's Orientalism to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's “Can the Subaltern Speak?” What follows from this minor textual detail is a broader exploration of how “other” languages take place in postcolonial theory—not only Said and Spivak's German, but Abdelfattah Kilito's Italian and Frantz Fanon's Ara…
Translating Whispers: Recitation, Realism, Religion
The essay analyzes the beginning of the seventh chapter of Naguib Mahfouz›s Palace Walk in which, at the heart of this realist novel, we encounter a vivid description of Qur’anic recitation. The scene does not discuss what is recited so much as it offers an account of how. “His voice could not be heard,” we are told, “but the continual motion of his lips gave him away. From time to time a faint whisper slipped out in a sibilant s sound.” What is …
Dying to Read: Reflections on the Ends of Literacy
The story of the Arabic novel is itself a sort of foundational fiction. In the rich history of Arabic letters, how might one narrate the conditions of this distinctive mode of narration? Is the novel an imperial literary form whose history in the Arab world is part of the negotiation, translation, or indigenization of models from afar? Or is the novel indebted to traditions already within the history of Arabic storytelling, transmuted and returne…
Old Media / New Futures: Revolutionary Reverberations of Fanon's Radio
In 1959, in the midst of the liberation struggle in Algeria, Frantz Fanon published L'an v de la révolution algérienne ( A Dying Colonialism ), which contained a chapter dedicated to the role of radio in anticolonial resistance. The chapter, “Ici la voix de l'Algérie” (“This Is the Voice of Algeria”), describes how the radio changed from mouthpiece of the French occupation to voice of the Algerian resistance, primarily between 1954 and 1956. Befo…
Hermenêutica
Pensando Com Saba Mahmood: Apresentação
In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt
We have grown accustomed to understanding world literature as a collection of national or linguistic traditions bound together in the universality of storytelling. This book challenges this way of thinking and argues instead that the disciplinary framework of world literature, far from serving as the neutral meeting ground of national literary traditions, levels differences between scripture, poetry, and prose, and fashions textual forms into a p…
In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt
We have grown accustomed to understanding world literature as a collection of national or linguistic traditions bound together in the universality of storytelling. Michael Allan challenges this way of thinking and argues instead that the disciplinary framework of world literature, far from serving as the neutral meeting ground of national literary traditions, levels differences between scripture, poetry, and prose, and fashions textual forms into…
Lingua Franca: Towards a Philology of the Sea
On Writing with Photography
Karen Beckman and Liliane Weissberg's edited collection On Writing with Photography sets out “to offer a reminder that writing with photographs constitutes not a minor subset of literary practice, but rather a foundational aspect of the modern reading experience” (xiii). With a wide range of authors from across the humanities, the book provides insights into a visual and textual interplay that pushes beyond concerns with medium specificity. In fa…
Queer Couplings: Formations of Religion and Sexuality in ʿalaʾ Al-Aswani's ʿimarat Yaʿqubyan
Faced with the possible censoring of the film adaptation of ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan , the book's author, ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani, responded, “Why aren't Italy, France, or the United States defamed by movies dealing with homosexuality?” Implicit in his defensive question is a perceived distinction between First World gay rights and social conservatism in the Third World. My paper considers this conventional coupling of gay rights and civilizational discourse in…
How Adab Became Literary: Formalism, Orientalism and the Institutions of World Literature
Lamenting that “the concept of literary study is broadened . . . so radically that it becomes identical with the whole history of humanity,” René Wellek implores scholars instead to “face the problem of ‘literariness’.” This essay considers Wellek’s formalist conception of literariness alongside what might appear its counterpoint: the historically situated understanding of adab . Just how universal is Wellek’s concept of literariness? In what way…
Deserted histories: The Lumière Brothers, the pyramids and early film form
When Alexandre Promio reached the shores of Alexandria in 1897, he began a voyage to capture Egyptian sites cinematically for the Lumière Brothers' film company. Among a number of these early films, his 50‐second shot of the pyramids at Giza, Les Pyramides (vue générale), is now understood as a monument within early film history and a testament to the international spread of the new medium. What the film offers, however, is less the novelty of se…
Reading with One Eye, Speaking with One Tongue: On the Problem of Address in World Literature
Aby Warburg, between Kant and Boas: From Aesthetics to the Anthropology of Images
How Adab Became Literary: Formalism, Orientalism and the Institutions of World Literature
Lamenting that “the concept of literary study is broadened . . . so radically that it becomes identical with the whole history of humanity,” René Wellek implores scholars instead to “face the problem of ‘literariness’.” This essay considers Wellek’s formalist conception of literariness alongside what might appear its counterpoint: the historically situated understanding of adab . Just how universal is Wellek’s concept of literariness? In what way…
Translating Whispers: Recitation, Realism, Religion
The essay analyzes the beginning of the seventh chapter of Naguib Mahfouz›s Palace Walk in which, at the heart of this realist novel, we encounter a vivid description of Qur’anic recitation. The scene does not discuss what is recited so much as it offers an account of how. “His voice could not be heard,” we are told, “but the continual motion of his lips gave him away. From time to time a faint whisper slipped out in a sibilant s sound.” What is …
Hermenêutica
Lingua Franca: Towards a Philology of the Sea
Queer Couplings: Formations of Religion and Sexuality in ʿalaʾ Al-Aswani's ʿimarat Yaʿqubyan
Faced with the possible censoring of the film adaptation of ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan , the book's author, ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani, responded, “Why aren't Italy, France, or the United States defamed by movies dealing with homosexuality?” Implicit in his defensive question is a perceived distinction between First World gay rights and social conservatism in the Third World. My paper considers this conventional coupling of gay rights and civilizational discourse in…
Reading with One Eye, Speaking with One Tongue: On the Problem of Address in World Literature
Aby Warburg, between Kant and Boas: From Aesthetics to the Anthropology of Images
Reading with One Eye, Speaking with One Tongue: On the Problem of Address in World Literature
Deserted histories: The Lumière Brothers, the pyramids and early film form
When Alexandre Promio reached the shores of Alexandria in 1897, he began a voyage to capture Egyptian sites cinematically for the Lumière Brothers' film company. Among a number of these early films, his 50‐second shot of the pyramids at Giza, Les Pyramides (vue générale), is now understood as a monument within early film history and a testament to the international spread of the new medium. What the film offers, however, is less the novelty of se…
How Adab Became Literary: Formalism, Orientalism and the Institutions of World Literature
Lamenting that “the concept of literary study is broadened . . . so radically that it becomes identical with the whole history of humanity,” René Wellek implores scholars instead to “face the problem of ‘literariness’.” This essay considers Wellek’s formalist conception of literariness alongside what might appear its counterpoint: the historically situated understanding of adab . Just how universal is Wellek’s concept of literariness? In what way…
Queer Couplings: Formations of Religion and Sexuality in ʿalaʾ Al-Aswani's ʿimarat Yaʿqubyan
Faced with the possible censoring of the film adaptation of ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan , the book's author, ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani, responded, “Why aren't Italy, France, or the United States defamed by movies dealing with homosexuality?” Implicit in his defensive question is a perceived distinction between First World gay rights and social conservatism in the Third World. My paper considers this conventional coupling of gay rights and civilizational discourse in…
On Writing with Photography
Karen Beckman and Liliane Weissberg's edited collection On Writing with Photography sets out “to offer a reminder that writing with photographs constitutes not a minor subset of literary practice, but rather a foundational aspect of the modern reading experience” (xiii). With a wide range of authors from across the humanities, the book provides insights into a visual and textual interplay that pushes beyond concerns with medium specificity. In fa…
In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt
We have grown accustomed to understanding world literature as a collection of national or linguistic traditions bound together in the universality of storytelling. This book challenges this way of thinking and argues instead that the disciplinary framework of world literature, far from serving as the neutral meeting ground of national literary traditions, levels differences between scripture, poetry, and prose, and fashions textual forms into a p…
In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt
We have grown accustomed to understanding world literature as a collection of national or linguistic traditions bound together in the universality of storytelling. Michael Allan challenges this way of thinking and argues instead that the disciplinary framework of world literature, far from serving as the neutral meeting ground of national literary traditions, levels differences between scripture, poetry, and prose, and fashions textual forms into…
Lingua Franca: Towards a Philology of the Sea
Old Media / New Futures: Revolutionary Reverberations of Fanon's Radio
In 1959, in the midst of the liberation struggle in Algeria, Frantz Fanon published L'an v de la révolution algérienne ( A Dying Colonialism ), which contained a chapter dedicated to the role of radio in anticolonial resistance. The chapter, “Ici la voix de l'Algérie” (“This Is the Voice of Algeria”), describes how the radio changed from mouthpiece of the French occupation to voice of the Algerian resistance, primarily between 1954 and 1956. Befo…
Hermenêutica
Pensando Com Saba Mahmood: Apresentação
Dying to Read: Reflections on the Ends of Literacy
The story of the Arabic novel is itself a sort of foundational fiction. In the rich history of Arabic letters, how might one narrate the conditions of this distinctive mode of narration? Is the novel an imperial literary form whose history in the Arab world is part of the negotiation, translation, or indigenization of models from afar? Or is the novel indebted to traditions already within the history of Arabic storytelling, transmuted and returne…
Translating Whispers: Recitation, Realism, Religion
The essay analyzes the beginning of the seventh chapter of Naguib Mahfouz›s Palace Walk in which, at the heart of this realist novel, we encounter a vivid description of Qur’anic recitation. The scene does not discuss what is recited so much as it offers an account of how. “His voice could not be heard,” we are told, “but the continual motion of his lips gave him away. From time to time a faint whisper slipped out in a sibilant s sound.” What is …
The Language(s) of Self-Representation
This essay tracks Karl Marx's famous line “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented” as it travels from a translated epigraph in Edward Said's Orientalism to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's “Can the Subaltern Speak?” What follows from this minor textual detail is a broader exploration of how “other” languages take place in postcolonial theory—not only Said and Spivak's German, but Abdelfattah Kilito's Italian and Frantz Fanon's Ara…
Art (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (6 works) · Islamic Studies and History (5 works) · History (4 works)