LibGuides: AUB Faculty and Staff Book Publications: 2019-Present: English Language and Literature

Books by year

Reading John Milton: An introduction by David Currell
Publication Date: 2024 (forthcoming in September)
Reading John Milton is a guide to Milton's writings written for students, teachers, and readers everywhere seeking to approach this major figure in English and world literature. Milton's works range from the monumental epic Paradise Lost to moving personal sonnets, from the tragic grandeur of Samson Agonistes to prose defenses of political liberty and religious tolerance. This book offers clear, fresh introductions and commentary that make an author with a reputation for difficulty relevant and accessible.

APA citation:

Currell, D. (2024). Reading John Milton: An introduction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003267041

Arabizi As a Learning and Teaching Resource by Zinnia Shweiry
Publication Date: 2025 (Forthcoming in February)
This book is the first of its genre to explore the use of Arabizi, the Romanized script of the Arabic language that is used online or in chat apps, in the Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) classroom. It fills a noticeable, and glaring, gap in teaching a non-Romanized language through Romanized representation by observing and studying Arabizi as a resource that is yet to be acknowledged. As such, the author aptly, and concurrently, addresses concerns and problems that arise in AFL learning.

APA citation:

Shweiry, Z. (2025). Arabizi as a learning and teaching resource: A linguistic study of Arabic in a foreign language classroom. Springer. (Forthcoming in February 2024)

An Impossible Friendship by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Publication Date: 2024
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi tells the story of this unlikely friendship and in so doing offers an intimate cultural and social history of Palestine in the critical postwar period. She vividly reconstructs the vanished social world of these protagonists, tracing the connections between the specificity of individual lives and the larger contexts in which they are embedded. In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates how social biography can provide a picture of the past that is at once more inclusive and more personal.

APA citation:

Mejcher-Atassi, S. (2024). An impossible friendship: Group portrait, Jerusalem before and after 1948. Columbia University Press.

Latin America, al-Andalus, and the Arab World by Robert Myers (editor)
Publication Date: 2024
Latin America, al-Andalus, and the Arab World: Essays on Cultural Transmission and Artistic Reimaginings delves into the rich tapestry of cultural exchanges from the Arab Islamic region spanning centuries. The collection explores the centuries-long transmission of literature, language, music, theater architecture, and other forms of art and culture that initially arrived to the Iberian Peninsula, transported to Latin America and, more recently, back to the Arab World. Bringing together the foremost international scholars of culture from these three regions such as Luce López-Baralt, Christina Civantos, Emilio González Ferrín, and Enass Khansa, the volume addresses the nuanced and often underestimated connections that bind them together, shedding light on a profound kinship that has shaped the artistic and cultural landscapes across time.

APA citation:

Myers, R. (Ed.). (2024). Latin America, al-Andalus, and the Arab World: Essays on cultural transmission and artistic reimaginings. American University of Beirut Press. Available at UL

The Modern Arabic Bible: Translation, dissemination and literary impact by Rana Issa
Publication Date: 2023
This innovative study compares nineteenth-century Arabic translations of the Bible to determine how it emerged as a foundational text of Arab modernity. Bible translation gained global traction through the work of Anglophone Christian missionaries, who made an attempt at synchronising translated Bibles in world languages by laying down strict guidelines and supervising the processes of translation and dissemination. By engaging with the intellectual beginnings of two local translators, Butrus al-Bustani (1819 - 1883) and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804 -1887), as well as their subsequent contributions to Arabic language and literature, this book questions to what extent they complied with the missionaries' strategy in practice.

APA citation:

Issa, R. (2023). The Modern Arabic Bible: Translation, dissemination and literary impact. Edinburgh University Press.

The Corpse in the Kitchen by Adam John Waterman
Publication Date: 2022
Reassessing the archive of the Black Hawk War, The Corpse in the Kitchen explores relationships between the enclosure of Indigenous land, histories of resource extraction, and the literary culture of settler colonialism. While conventional histories of the Black Hawk War have long treated the conflict as gratuitous, Adam John Waterman argues that the war part of a struggle over the dispensation of mineral resources specifically, mineral lead--and the emergence of new cultures of killing and composition.

APA citation:

Waterman, A. J. (2022). The corpse in the kitchen : Enclosure, extraction, and the afterlives of the Black Hawk War. Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823298792 Available at UL

Addressing women in early medieval religious texts by Kathryn Maude
Publication Date: 2021
This book argues that by analysing texts deliberately written for and addressed directly to women we gain an insight into the horizons of possibility for their lives. It examines religious texts addressed to women, bringing together works that are more widely studied with others that are less well known, and demonstrates continuities across Old English and Latin texts written for female readers and patrons across the Conquest period.

APA citation:

Maude, K. (2021). Addressing women in early medieval religious texts. D. S. Brewer. Available at UL

The theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (Editor); Robert Myers (Editor)
Publication Date: 2021
The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous is the first book in English to provide a clear sense of the significance and complexity of Wannous' life and work. It is unique in bringing cross-disciplinary scholarship on Wannous together and aligning it with cultural practice and memory by including contributions from leading academics as well as renowned cultural figures from the Arab world. This volume should be of interest to literary and theatre studies scholars, cultural historians, theatre practitioners and anyone who cares about contemporary theatre, Syria and the Arab world.

APA citation:

Mejcher-Atassi, S., & Myers, R. (Eds.). (2021). The theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous: A critical study of the Syrian playwright and public intellectual. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973182 Available at UL

Articulations of resistance: transformative practices in contemporary Arab-American poetry by Sirène H. Harb
Call Number: J 811.9:H255a
Publication Date: 2020
Using a theoretical framework located at the intersection of US ethnic studies, transnational studies, and postcolonial studies, Articulations of Resistance maps an interdisciplinary model of critical inquiry to demonstrate the intimate link and multilayered connections between poetry and resistance. Sirène Harb analyzes how resistance, defined as the force challenging the dominant, intervenes in ways of rethinking the local and the global vis-à-vis traditional paradigms of time, space, language and value.

APA citation:

Harb, S. S. (2020). Articulations of resistance: Transformative practices in contemporary Arab-American poetry. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429350856 Available at UL

Modern and contemporary political theater from the Levant: A critical anthology by Robert Myers; Nada Saab
Call Number: J 892.72:M996m
Publication Date: 2019
In Modern and Contemporary Political Theater from the Levant, A Critical Anthology, Robert Myers and Nada Saab provide a sense of the variety and complexity of political theater produced in and around the Levant from the 1960s to the present within a context of wider discussions about political theater and the histories and forms of performance from the Islamic and Arab worlds.

APA citation:

Myers, R., & Saab, N. (2019). Modern and contemporary political theater from the Levant: A critical anthology. Brill. Available at UL

Sentence to hope: a Saʻdallah Wannous reader by Nada Saab (Translator); Sa'dallah Wannous; Robert Myers (Translator)
Call Number: J 892.78:W249s
Publication Date: 2019
The first major English-language collection of plays and essays by Syrian playwright Sa'dallah Wannous Sa'dallah Wannous is acknowledged to be one of the Arab world's most significant playwrights, writers, and intellectuals of the twentieth century. This is the first major English-language collection that brings together his most significant plays and essays.

APA citation:

Wannous, S. (2019). Sentence to hope: A Sa'dallah Wannous reader [translated from the Arabic and with an introduction by R. Myers & N. Saab]. Yale University Press. Available at UL

Book chapters by year

APA citations:

Currell, D. (2022). Milton among the satirists. In C. Rosengren, P. Sivefors, & R. Wingård (Eds.), Changing satire: Transformations and continuities in Europe, 1600-1830 (pp. 139-161). Manchester University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2gvdmgw

Currell, D. (2022). Scripture, scorn, and Milton's dynamics of derision. In C. Tournu, J. K. Hale, & N. Forsyth (Eds.), Milton in Strasbourg: A collection of essays based on papers delivered to the IMS12, 17-21 June 2019 (pp. 101-114). Peter Lang. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1255644

Maude, K. (2022). Berhtgyth. In M. M. Sauer, D. Watt, & L. H. McAvoy (Eds.), The Palgrave encyclopedia of medieval women's writing in the global middle ages (pp. 1-2). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_9-1 Available at UL

Maude, K. (2022). Early Latin women poets. In M. M. Sauer, D. Watt, & L. H. McAvoy (Eds.), The Palgrave encyclopedia of medieval women's writing in the global middle ages (pp. 1-6). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_18-1 Available at UL

Maude, K. (2022). Encomium Emmae reginae. In M. M. Sauer, D. Watt, & L. H. McAvoy (Eds.), The Palgrave encyclopedia of medieval women's writing in the global middle ages (pp. 1-5). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_87-1 Available at UL

APA citations:

Issa, R. (2021). Missionary philology and the invention of Bibleland. In R. J. Zorgati & A. Bohlin (Eds.), Tracing the Jerusalem code. Volume 3: The Promised Land: Christian cultures in modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750-ca. 1920) (pp. 309-327). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639476-017 Available at UL

Mejcher-Atassi, S. (2021). Unpacking Wannous' Library. In S. Mejcher-Atassi & R. Myers (Eds.), The theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous: A critical study of the Syrian playwright and public intellectual (pp. 165-185). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973182.011 Available at UL

Myers, R., & Saab, N. (2021). Wannous and Brecht: The playwright as political activist. In S. Mejcher-Atassi & R. Myers (Eds.), The theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous: A critical study of the Syrian playwright and public intellectual (pp. 34-56). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973182.004 Available at UL

Zenger, A., & Pill, J. (2021). Moments of intersection, rupture, tension: Writing and academic disciplines in the semiperiphery. In M. Gustafsson & A. Eriksson (Eds.), Negotiating the intersections of writing and writing instruction (pp. 259-282). University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/int-b.2022.1466.2.09

APA citations:

Awada, G. M., Diab, H. B., & Faour, K. H. (2020). Effect of GI and Glogster on improving the intercultural communication skills in higher education. In Information Resources Management Association (Ed.), Multicultural instructional design: Concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications (pp. 576-604). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9279-2.ch027 Available at UL

Baalbaki, R., Fakhreddine, J., Khoury, M., & Riman, S. (2020). Arabic, as a home language, acts as a resource in an English writing class: Borrowing translation strategies in a first year writing course. In A. Frost, J. E. Kiernan, & S. Blum Malley (Eds.), Translingual dispositions: Globalized approaches to the teaching of writing (pp. 225-247). WAC Clearinghouse & University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2020.0438.2.10

Hout, S. (2020). Looking for home in all the wrong places: The various Lebanons of De Niro’s Game. In K. Majer (Ed.), Beirut to Carnival City (pp. 35-55). Brill. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004417304_004 Available at UL

Jarkas, N., & Charafeddine, F. (2020). Redesigning a writing-intensive graduate course: An information literacy case study at AUB. In M. Stöpel, L. Piotto, X. Goodman, & S. Godbey (Eds.), Faculty-librarian collaborations: Integrating the information literacy framework into disciplinary courses. Association of College and Research Libraries.

APA citation:

Currell, D. (2019). The better part of stolen valour counterfeits, comedy and the supreme court. In P. Gray (Ed.), Shakespeare and the ethics of war (pp. 101-117). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1850gtv.8