Opening Up the Text : Arabic Literary Studies on the Move

Abstract

The uprisings associated with the “Arab Spring” since 2010 have had amultifaceted impact on the field of Arabic literary studies in general and inGermany in particular. The political protests in the Arab world evolvedalong with a “cultural revolution” that sees literature and art as tools of the“new political”. In consequence, Arabic literary studies have begun revis-iting the relationship between literature and society, thereby “opening up”the concept of the traditional literary text. Scholars of Arabic literature arenow eager to study new text forms such as blogs, graffiti and slogans andexplore the sociopolitical conditions of texts and the socioculturalpractices of writing. However, this opening up is by no means limited toacademic research in Arabic literary studies. Indeed, practices of network-ing, language instruction and societal commitment throughout the disci-pline are opening up. Strengthening collaborative research efforts amongscholars based in the West and the Arab world, teaching Arabic as a mod-ern language of communication and knowledge production, and demon-strating societal commitment in the growing presence of Arab refugeesand migrants in Germany, the field of Arabic literary studies is on themove.