Wendy Steiner; Javad Khorsandi
Abstract
Wendy Steiner is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Steiner earned her B.A. from McGill University in 1970 and both her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1972 and 1974 respectively. After teaching at Yale (1974-1976) and ...
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Wendy Steiner is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Steiner earned her B.A. from McGill University in 1970 and both her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1972 and 1974 respectively. After teaching at Yale (1974-1976) and the University of Michigan (1976-1979), she joined the Penn faculty in 1979. Promoted to associate professor three years later, she was named full professor in 1985. At Penn, she served as Chair of the English Department from 1995-1999, Founding Director of the Penn Humanities Forum from 1998-2010, Master of Modern Languages College House from 1985-1988, and director of the Penn/King’s College Program in London from 1989-1990. Professor Steiner’s fields are interartistic relations and literature in English of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among her books on modern literature and visual art are The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art (2010); Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001). Professor Steiner has received awards from the Guggenheim, ACLS, and Mellon Foundations among others, and her cultural reviews have appeared widely in U.S. and British periodicals, including The New York Times, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian. Javad Khorsandi, Ph.D. student of English Language and Literature at Shiraz University has arranged this interview with Professor Steiner.
3. Applied Literature
Javad Khorsandi
Abstract
Ahmed Saadawi’s third and last novel Frankenstein in Baghdad was originally published in Arabic in 2013 and has since been translated into several languages, including an English translation by Jonathan Wright in 2018. The novel, which won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, is a heart-rending ...
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Ahmed Saadawi’s third and last novel Frankenstein in Baghdad was originally published in Arabic in 2013 and has since been translated into several languages, including an English translation by Jonathan Wright in 2018. The novel, which won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, is a heart-rending story of a country blighted by an unending cycle of war, violence, and misery. Saadawi’s novel captures the mood of post-war Iraq and provides the readers with one of the most vivid descriptions of mayhem and terror in Middle Eastern literature. The title of the novel is more misleading than clarifying. Apart from a couple of passing references and a superficial similarity in creating a patchwork monster inflicting terror and violence, Saadawi’s novel has almost nothing to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).