2026 Matar Family Lecture in Arabic Studies: "Our Oracle Ruin: The Arabic Poetic Tradition in the Time of Genocide"

In the aftermath of tragedy, and in the silence that follows the massacre, Gaza becomes a language, a reading, an interrogation, a refutation of all that was before, and a compass for all that comes after. What good is the Arabic language if it does not dedicate itself at this moment to encompass, no matter how impossible, the magnitude of the horrors in Gaza? This talk launches from the Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada’s work to present a reading of the Arabic poetic tradition through the lens of Gaza, highlighting 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, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, Zaman saghir taht shams thaniya (creative nonfiction), and Wa min thamma al-ʿalam (poetry). She is the translator of several books of poetry, most recently Ruins and Other Poems by Samer Abu Hawwash.

This talk is in-person. Reception to follow.

Co-sponsored by The Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, The Department of English, and Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature.