Ken Seigneurie

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Research essay for peer-review journal based on How My Days Passed (see “Publications”). English and Armenian literatures. For Dec. 2024

A Concise Companion to World Literature. Co-editor with Paula Karger of this one-volume version of the full six-volume Companion published in 2020. Wiley Blackwell (see “Publications”). For 2025.

“To Darkness on Extended Wings: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Novel and Liberal Nihilism.” Monograph-length study explores non-Western novelistic framings of the crisis of liberal thought. Arabic, English, and French world literatures. For 2026.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Simon Fraser University

Department of World Languages and Literatures
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

• Professor, Department of World Languages and Literatures: 2014 – present
• Chair ad interim World Languages and Literatures Department: 2021-2022
• Director, World Literature Program: 2009 – 2015
• Associate Professor, World Literature Program: 2009 – 2014

SFU Campus Affiliations

• The Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies (CCMS)
• The Institute for the Humanities

American University of Beirut

Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR)

• Edward Said Chair in American Studies: 2017 – 2018

Lebanese American University, Beirut

Department of Humanities (“Division of Humanities” prior to 2007)

• Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature: 2005 – 2009
• Chair, Division of Humanities: 2003 – 2005
• Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature: 1999 – 2005

University of Balamand, Tripoli, Lebanon

English Department and M.A. Program in Comparative Literature

• Chair, English Department and M.A. Program in Comparative Literature: 1997 – 1999
• Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature: 1997 – 1999
• Assistant Professor of English: 1996 – 1997

EDUCATION

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Ph.D., Comparative Literature: 1995. Dissertation Committee: Ross Chambers (co-chair), Alina Clej (co-chair), Simon Gikandi, Trevor LeGassick

Dissertation title: “Space and the Colonial Encounter in Lawrence Durrell, Out el-Kouloub and Naguib Mahfouz”

M.A., Comparative Literature (Arabic, French, British): 1991

Michigan State University, East Lansing

B.A., English Literature (Minor: Philosophy): 1982

B.S., Biology/Zoology: 1982

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND HONORS

Simon Fraser University

• 2024-2026  SFU - SSHRC Small Explore Research Grant
• Study Leave, 2020-2021
• Small SSHRC Grant, 2014
• SFU Endowed Research Fellowship, 2009
• SFU President’s Research Start-up Grant, 2009

Lebanese American University, Beirut

• Sabbatical Year Research Grant: 2005 – 2006
• Research Council Grant (course release earned twice yearly on a semesterly application basis): 2001 – 2005

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

A Concise Companion to World Literature. Co-edited with Paula Karger. Single-volume version of the six-volume Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature (see below). 450 pages. (Forthcoming 2025)

How My Days Passed: An Armenian Picaresque by Hagop Der Balian. Co-edited with Antranik Dakessian. Translator: Vatche Ghazarian. Beirut: Haigazian University Press, July 2024. 190 pages. Bilingual (Armenian-English) first-person memoir of the 1915-16 Armenian Genocide including foreword by Raymond Kévorkian, editors’ introduction, maps, and photos.

Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature (6 vols.). Editor-in-Chief. Hoboken USA, and Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2020. 3808 pages. https://www.wiley.com/en-ca/A+Companion+to+World+Literature-p-9781118993187   2021 PROSE Finalist: Single and Multivolume Reference, & Textbooks in the Humanities.

How the German Came to His Senses. Translation (from Arabic) of ‘Awdat al-almānī ila rushdih by Rashid al-Daif, in What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin by Rashid al-Daif and Joachim Helfer. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015.  http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-Man-Literatures-Translation/dp/0292763107   

Standing by the Ruins: Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. 247 pages. https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823234837/standing-by-the-ruins/ Named a Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title” of 2012.

Crisis and Memory: The Representation of Space in Modern Levantine Narrative. Editor. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2003. 259 pages. https://reichert-verlag.de/en/9783895003400_crisis_and_memory-detail

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“Provincializing the Buffered Self: Deep Eurocentrism and World Literature.” Chapter for Routledge Companion to Global Comparative Literature. Eds. Zhang Longxi and Omid Azadibougar. New York: Routledge. (In press).

“Modern Nihilism and Naguib Mahfouz’s Faith in Liberalism.” Middle Eastern Literatures. 24 (3), 167-189.  https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2147415

“The Companion to World Literature… For Those Who Yearn.” General Introduction to the Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature (3000 words). 2020.

“Literature and Liberalism: An Evolving Symbiosis.” Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature (2500 words). 2020.

“The Role of Arabic Literature in World Literature.” Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in English Translation. Ed. Michelle Hartman. Modern Language Association, 2018: 21-40.

“The Real Problem with World Literature.” Le Comparatisme comme approche critique/Comparative Literature as a Critical Approach. Local et mondial : circulations / Local and Global: Circulations, Tome 5. Ed. Anne Tomiche. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017. 73-80.

 “The Institution and the Practice of Comparative Literature in Lebanon.” Comparative Literature Studies 51.3 (2014): 373-396. Revised and expanded by 1000 words in 2023 for Comparative Literature in Asia: Praxis and Possibilities, ed. Mrinmoy Pramanick. Hong Kong University Press. For January 2025.

“Discourses of the 2011 Arab Revolutions.” Journal of Arabic Literature 43.2-3 (2013): 484-509.

“Irony and Counter-Irony in Rashid al-Daif’s How the German Came to His Senses” College Literature 37.1 (2010): 38-60. Reprinted in What Makes a Man? (see above).

“The Wrench and the Ratchet: Cultural Mediation in a Contemporary Liberation Struggle.” Public Culture 21.2 (2009): 377-402.

“Anointing with Rubble: Ruins in the Lebanese War Novel.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28.1 (2008): 50-60.

“Ongoing War and Arab Humanism.” Geomodernisms: “Race,” Modernism, Modernity, eds. Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel. Indiana UP, 2005. 96-113.

“Sweeping The Alexandria Quartet out of a Dusty Corner.” Deus Loci (2003-2005): 82-110.

“Decolonizing the British: Deflections of Desire in The Alexandria Quartet.” South Atlantic Review 69.1 (Winter 2004): 85-108.

“The Importance of Being Kawabata: The Narratee in Today’s Literature of Commitment.” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 34.1 (Winter 2004): 54-73. Reprinted in: Rachid El Daif: Le Roman arabe dans la tourmente de la modernisation, ed. Katia Ghosn. Paris: Editions Demopolis, 2016.

“Introduction: A Survival Aesthetic for Ongoing War.” Crisis and Memory, ed. Ken Seigneurie. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2003. 11-32.

 “The Everyday World of War in Hassan Daoud’s House of Mathilde.” Crisis and Memory, ed. Ken Seigneurie. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2003. 101-14.

 “The Flickering Light of Literature: 8–18 February 2000.” Profession 2000. Modern Language Association, 2000. 46-53.

Invited Articles and Non-Peer-Reviewed Writing

Seigneurie, Ken and Paula Karger. “Changing the Way World Literature Is Taught.” Editors’ Introduction to A Concise Companion to World Literature. (2300 words). (Forthcoming 2025)

“Will World Literature Push the Bible into Oblivion?.” Article for A Concise Companion to World Literature. (3000 words). (Forthcoming 2025)

Seigneurie, Ken and Antranik Dakessian. “The Armenian Christian Picaresque.” Introduction to How My Days Passed: An Armenian Picaresque by Hagop Der Balian. Beirut: Haigazian University Press, 2024.

“Literature in Translation: From Equivocality to Eyebrows.” International Agenda. 19.1 (Winter 2020): 27-29.

“World and Comparative Literatures in Winter.” Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature 2.1 (January 2012).

Book Reviews

Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation by Emily Drumsta. International Journal of Middle East Studies. (Forthcoming).

Islam and New Directions in World Literature edited by Sarah R. Bin Tyeer and Claire Gallien. Al-Abhath. (Forthcoming).

Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures edited by Stefan Helgesson, Birgit Neumann, Gabriel Rippl. Anglia: Journal of English Philology. 141.1 (2023), pp. 156-160. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2023-0012

Mémoires d'un Survivant du Génocide des Arméniens d’Adana à Mossoul by Hagop Der Balian. Études arméniennes contemporaines. 13 (2021): 241-245. https://doi.org/10.4000/eac.2723

Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon by Chad Elias. Journal of Arabic Literature. 51.1-2 (2020): 160–164.

“The BangClash of Modernities.” Review of Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time by Susan Stanford Friedman. Los Angeles Review of Books. 13 June 2016.

The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz (1952-1967) by Nathaniel Greenberg. International Journal of Middle East Studies. 47 (2015): 608-610.

Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon, by Lucia Volk. Journal of Arabic Literature. 43.2-3 (2013): 535-537.

PRESENTATIONS AT SCHOLARLY MEETINGS

“Political Intersections in the Writings of Four Female 'Saints': Maria Skobtsova, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and Dorothy Day.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2024 (paper and panel organizer).

“One Mysticism Can Hide Another: Mahfouz’s al-Shaḥḥādh (‘The Beggar’).” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2022 (seminar paper).

“Discontents of Liberal Aspiration in Naguib Mahfouz’s al-Shaḥḥādh (‘The Beggar’).” American Comparative Literature Association, April 2021 (paper and seminar organizer).

“Liberal Thought and World Literature: The Case of Naguib Mahfouz.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2020 (paper).

“World Literature and New Humanism in the Digital Age.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2020 (roundtable organizer and participant).

“For World Literary Values in the Non-Anglophone Classroom.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2017 (roundtable paper).

“Cultural Anacoluthon: Rashid al-Daif’s and Joachim Helfer’s What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2015 (paper).

“A Little Adab Will Do: World Literature in Levantine Arab Culture.” American Comparative Literature Association, March 2014 (paper).

“The Trans-Mediterranean Fortunes of Comparative Literature in the Arab World.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2014 (paper).

“Close Reading World Literature.” International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), July 2013 (paper).

“Discourses of Uprising in the Arab World.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2013 (paper).

“From Martyrdom to Civic Consciousness in the Middle East Today.” American Comparative Literature Association, March 2012 (paper).

“Exploding the Myth of the Arab Street.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2012 (paper).

“The Logic of Redemptive Self-Sacrifice in Contemporary Lebanon.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2011 (paper).

“Trauma and Nostalgia in Lebanese Film.” American Comparative Literature Association, April 2010 (paper).

“The Modernization of Topoi in the Lebanese Novel.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2009 (paper and panel organizer).

“An Aesthetic of War Ruins: History and Humanism in the Lebanese Arabic Novel.” American Comparative Literature Association, March 2009 (paper).

“Worldly War Literature: The Case of Lebanon.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2008 (paper and panel organizer).

“Standing by the Ruins in Lebanese War Film.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2007 (paper and panel organizer).

“Homosexuality in Rashid al-Daif’s ‘Awdat al-almānī ila rushdih (The German Comes Back to His Senses).” Middle East Studies Association Annual Convention, November 2007 (paper).

“Chiasmus on Masculinity in Rashid al-Daif’s The German Comes Back to His Senses.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2006. (paper and panel organizer).

“Anointing with Rubble: Atlal in the Lebanese War Novel.” Comparative Literature Lecture Series, April 2006, Lebanese American University, Beirut (paper).

“The Lebanese War Novel and Humanist Renewal.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2005 (paper).

“Fajanaakun! Moo? (We Surprised You! Didn’t We?).” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2004 (paper).

“The British in Egypt: D.J. Enright and the Solution of Irresolution.” Modernist Studies Association, October 2004 (paper).

“Arab Humanism in a Time of Ongoing War.” Conference on Violence in the Middle East, May 2004. Lebanese American University (paper and conference organizer).

“A Survival Aesthetic for Ongoing War.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2003 (paper).

“Olivia Manning and Post-War Apocalypse.” International Society for the Study of European Ideas, 2002 (paper and panel organizer).

“The Unassuming Agon in Anglo-Egyptian Fiction.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2001 (paper and panel organizer).

“Social Space as a Critical Category in Late Colonial British Fiction.” American Comparative Literature Association, 2001 (paper and seminar organizer).

“The Importance of Being Kawabata: The Role of the Narratee in Rashid al-Daif’s Dear Mr. Kawabata” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Annual Conference, 2000 (paper).

“The New Martyr in Rashid al-Daif’s Dear Mr. Kawabata” Conference on Contemporary Arabic Literature, Lebanese American University, Beirut, 1999 (paper).

“Space, Narrative and Consciousness in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet” Comparative Literature Symposium, Texas Tech University, 1999 (paper).

KEYNOTES AND INVITED LECTURES

“Christianity and Romanticism: Counterfeit Communion and the Path to Christian-Liberal Integration.” Regent College of the University of British Columbia. February 2023.

“Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and La tercera palabra: Selective Appropriation as Self-Impoverishment?” Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) Annual Conference: “Latin America, al-Andalus and the Arab World.” American University of Beirut. April 2018. Co-author with Marianne Marroum.

“Why Is it Important to Study American Culture from Lebanon?” Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) Symposium: Localizing Transnational American Studies. American University of Beirut. March 2018.

“World Literature and the Post-Liberal Norm.” Sponsored by the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) and Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR). American University of Beirut. March 2018.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKMizogN9_8&list=PL426A6D9D78D7EC02

 “Toward Cross-Cultural Studies 2.0.”  American University of Beirut. March 2017.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPYX8PSqNo

“L’humanisme francophone peut-il exister?” Conference: Quel « nouvel humanisme » francophone contemporain? Université Paris-Sorbonne. June 2016.

“La Littérature mondiale : L'Esquisse d'un humanisme pour l’ère numérique.” Conference: Vers une littérature mondiale à l’heure du numérique? Université Paris – Sorbonne. October 2015.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inh6faRNfLM

“Humanities in Today’s University: The Elegiac in Modern Arabic Literature.” Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) and Global Culture Studies. Columbia University, New York, April 2015.

“Civil Strife, Memory and Politics in Lebanon.” Conference: December to Varkiza: Memory, Political Discourse, and the Greek Civil War. SFU Centre for Hellenic Studies, Vancouver, February 2015.

“La littérature-monde . . . et encore d’autres mondes.” Conference: Repenser la littérature-monde en français. SFU Department of French and Carleton University Department of French, Vancouver, April 2014 (keynote address in French).

“Angelika Neuwirth’s Deep Commitment to Modern Levantine Culture.” A symposium in honor of Angelika Neuwirth: “Erudition and Commitment.” Sponsored by the Forum Transregionale Studien: Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe and the Free University of Berlin. Berlin, Dec. 2013.

“Cultural Mediation in the Arab Uprisings.” Faculty Symposium - Middle East and Islamic Consortium of BC (MEICON-BC). Victoria, British Columbia, March 2013.

“Literariness and World Literature.” The German Orient Institute of Beirut. Beirut, December 2012.

“National and World Literatures: The Changing Roles of Cultural Production in the World Today.” Université Saint-Joseph, Centre d'Etudes pour le Monde Arabe Moderne (CEMAM). Beirut, December 2012.

“Arabic Literature in World Literature: (Still) Pointing Incredulously at Death.” Conference: At the Crossroads of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literary Heritage in the Context of World Literature. School of Modern Languages, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. September 2012 (keynote address).

“From Martyrdom to Civic Consciousness in Lebanon and the Middle East Today.” Simon Fraser University. Sponsored by the SFU Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures, the World Lebanese Cultural Union and the SFU Program in World Literature. Vancouver, British Columbia, January 2012. 

“Why the Arab Spring Is Succeeding and Occupy Wall Street Is Waning: A Culture-Based Approach.” Université Saint-Joseph, Centre d’Etudes pour le Monde Arabe Moderne (CEMAM). Beirut, December 2011.

“The Languages of Liberation in Lebanon and in the Arab Spring.” The Orient Institute of Beirut. Beirut, December 2011.

“Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanese Culture.” Teaching Arab Intellectual Thought and the Changing Role of the Literati. Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), Columbia University, New York, May 2011.

Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association. Victoria, British Columbia. November 2010 (keynote panelist).

“The Work of Nostalgia in Lebanese Film.” The Orient Institute of Beirut. Beirut, June 2010.

Conference on Collecting Practices in Lebanon: Alternative Visions of the Past. American University of Beirut. Beirut, May 2008 (invited panel chair and respondent).

Conference on Liberty and Justice: America and the Middle East. American University of Beirut. Beirut, January 2008 (invited panel chair and respondent).

Conference on the Lebanese War Novel. American University of Beirut. 2004 (invited panel chair and respondent).

“Today’s Literature of Commitment in the Arab World.” Forms of Interaction Between Middle Eastern Writers and Their Societies. Free University of Berlin, Germany. 2003 (invited paper and respondent).

“Le Récit de l’espace dans Binayat Mathilde de Hassan Daoud.” Conference on Modern Lebanese Literature, University of Toulouse 2000.

“Orientalism and the Undergraduate Liberal Arts Canon.” Civilization Sequence Lecture. American University of Beirut, 1997.

LANGUAGES

• French: near-native command
• Arabic, Modern Standard: good reading and speaking
• Arabic, Levantine: good reading and speaking

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

• American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)
• International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA)
• Lebanese Studies Association (LSA)
• Middle East Studies Association (MESA)
• Modern Language Association (MLA)