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For some teens, classical Arabic literature has a stiff and forbidding reputation. The teen protagonist in Huda El Shuwa’s young-adult novel Dragon of Bethlehem dreads Arabic class, and particularly pre-modern Arabic poetry. But then he meets a witty dragon who gives him a new way of looking at these fifteen-hundred-year-old poems. Freed from their traditional classroom context, the poems become something new. With the new Young Readers series from the New York University Press’s Library of Arabic Literature (LAL), the scholars Enass Khansa and Bilal Orfali are crafting something like this secret dragon. The series, which is releasing its third classic book this month, reframes pre-modern texts so that they can take wing in the classroom and beyond. “Classical Arabic literature is associated with many things,” Khansa said over a Zoom interview. “But it’s not associated with being a space for creative and experimental thinking. I think the main idea, for both of us, is that this [book series] is experimental. That’s why we’re medievalists—because there is richness and potential.”

This new series of the Library of Arabic Literature, a project of NYU-AD Institute, targets the youth and general readers. It aims to illustrate Arabic classics, making them accessible to general readers. For how do we understand texts written more than 1000 years ago? How can we visually reformulate the aesthetic and performatives questions in such texts? The selected texts include capturing narratives, inquiring questions, rhetorical dialogues, imaginative geography. They offer a vital opportunity to experience classical heritage and incite creativeness at the personal and epistemological levels. In this new series we offer a rich piece of a glorious Arabic heritage, in hope it will remain part of our cultural memory and consciousness.

Digitization and artificial intelligence, globalization, agriculture and sustainable resource production in times of climate change, genome editing and high-tech medicine, are highly topical issues of STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math). These technological and ecological transformations are increasingly shaping our everyday lives, and they determine how we will live in the future. Hence, new challenges for society arise, requiring philosophers, historians, literary scholars, and artists to provide us the essential knowledge and a variety of perspectives to reflect on social change, our ethical values, and norms: the humanities help us make meaning of the future world and define our place in it. The international AGYA conference aimed at exploring the potential and challenges of the humanities, engaging Arab and German key players in a multilateral dialogue.

The book launch of ‘Insatiable Appetite: Food as Cultural Signifier in the Middle East and Beyond’ on 14 October at the American University of Beirut was the public closing event of AGYA´s Annual Conference in Beirut 2019. The volume is the result of a collaboration between AGYA Alumni Prof. Dr. Julia Hauser (University of Kassel, Germany), Prof. Dr. Bilal Orfali (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) and Dr. Kirill Dmitriev (University of St. Andrews, U.K.), and was published by Brill in fall 2019. The editors Julia Hauser and Bilal Orfali presented the freshly released book and discussed its contents with Nawal Nasrallah, book author and food blogger, and Prof. Dr. Rebecca Earle (University of Warwick, UK). In addition, Dr. Brigitte Caland (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) gave a keynote lecture on 'Hummus, the International Life of an Indigenous Dish', accompanied by a tasting of different hummus recipes. In his welcome address, Prof. Dr. Mohamed Harajli, provost of the American University of Beirut, emphasized the 'transformative collaborations that can arise from partnerships such as fostered by AGYA that are intercontinental, transdisciplinary, and multicultural'. Furthermore, he accentuated on the importance of arts and humanities as part of the university curriculum, as they enable students to become better problem-solvers and communicators and finished his speech stating that the combination of humanities, technology, and purpose-based education promotes students with profound knowledge and diverse skills and provides lifelong learning.

Tales and stories are central to the cultural heritage of mankind: through creative interactions between people in different places at different times, stories traverse generations. In so doing, they can connect the past with the present and link what lies in the distance with what is close at hand. Tales and stories can shape the identity and self-image of individual people and entire communities. The exhibition ‘Cinderella, Sindbad & Sinuhe: Arab-German Storytelling Traditions’ at the Neues Museum in Berlin explored how some of the best known tales from both Arab and German – and wider Western – cultures developed from common roots, splitting over the centuries to reflect the societies that adopted them. More than 300.000 people came to visit the exhibition in Berlin and to profit from the diverse accompanying program. ‘Storytelling is universal and can be regarded as inherent to human nature’, explains Prof. Dr. Verena Lepper, AGYA Principal Investigator and curator at the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection Berlin. ‘With this exhibition we wanted to emphasize exchange processes, shared ideas, and the transfer of thoughts and concepts between the Arab world and Germany.’ Accompanying lectures by renowned experts like Prof. Dr. Beatrice Gründler and AGYA member Prof. Dr. Bilal Orfali provided deeper insights into research topics such as ‘Kalila wa Dimna: A unique work of world literature’ or ‘Two Picaresque Tales and a Yellow Cow - Hamadhānī’s Maqāma of Mosul’.

The Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan Chair for Islamic and Arab Studies held a two-day conference on Mysticism and Ethics in Islam at AUB, with the aim to give the wider audience a deeper understanding on the meaning of ethics and mysticism in relation to Islam. The conference was organized by Professors Bilal Orfali​, Mohammed Rustom ​and Radwan Sayyid​.