English & Comparative Literary Studies News

How did history, form and narrative interweave in After the Last Sky (1986) by Edward Said, adjoined with photographs by Jean Mohr? How did the text register peripheral modernism? And what social meanings and political significance resided there? PLCRG explored these questions, with Nadia Hajal-Backleh (convenor), zooming into the Palestinian tonalities of 1980s and their structure of feeling through literary-cultural critical writings, Palestinian poetry and artworks, as well as situating the conjuncture and its emergent peripheral modernism in relation to the historico-political changes, which the forcibly displaced and the exiled had to experience and endure in refugee camps both inside the occupied land and in the neighbouring Arab countries. We closely read some excerpts and interpreted some photographs mediating the production of the text, its aesthetic unity and politics, the uneven living conditions of Palestinian refugees, their fragmented lives and registered acts of disavowal, and more. The text is rich, and the collective engagement of students (UG, PGT, PGR) and professors from the different Warwick departments was crucial and astute.

Worth to mention that this event built on an earlier experience in February 2025, wherein we discussed Emile Habibi’s historical novel The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (1974), exploring history, critical irrealism, satire, and the paradoxes faced by dispossessed Palestinians under Israel’s colonial rule, its militarization, ghettoization, and high surveillance. We started with an elaborate introduction by the convenor, Nadia Hajal-Backleh, followed by reading excerpts to mediate both form and narrative as well as literary geographies of subversion and resources of hope within the uneven and combined colonial modern condition. The event was co-organized with students’ bodies, including Warwick Action for Palestine, Shakespeare Society, and Literature Society.