Shawkat Toorawa

Biography

I have taught Arabic at Duke University, medieval French literature and Indian Ocean studies at the University of Mauritius, and Arabic and comparative literature at Cornell University. I have also worked in a family import/export company in Kuala Lumpur and Port-Louis. Since joining Yale in 2016, my courses have included ones on medieval Baghdad, on the Arabic and Islamic Classics, on medieval and early modern travel accounts, and graduate seminars on Arabic literature.

Books include Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, co-authored with RRAALL; Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture: A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad; the edited collection, The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders; an edited anthology, The City that Never Sleeps: Poems of New York; and a critical edition, collaboratively translated with the editors of the Library of Arabic Literature, of Ibn al-Sa‘i’s Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad.  

I am a Director of the School of Abbasid Studies; a series editor of Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Lockwood Press, and of Cultural Legacies at Pink Pigeon Press/Solitaire. I am on the editorial or advisory boards of several journals, including the Journal of Abbasid Studies, the Journal of Arabic Literature, the Journal of Qur’anic Studies, and Middle Eastern Literatures. Since 2010, I have been an executive editor of the Library of Arabic Literature, an initiative to edit and translate key works from the premodern Arabic literary heritage.

Education

B.A. (Hons), University of Pennsylvania, 1985
A.M. University of Pennsylvania, 1989
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1998

Research Interests

Classical and medieval Arabic literature

Literary and writerly culture of Abbasid Baghdad

Literary dimensions of the Qur’an

The Waqwaq Tree and islands

Modern poetry

Science Fiction film and literature

Translation

Publication Highlights

What and Where on Earth is Waqwaq? In JOURNAL OF ABBASID STUDIES 10 (2023), 184–207.

The Qur’anic Story of Joseph in 5 Acts: A Playscript Translation of Sūrat Yūsuf (Q. 12). JOURNAL OF QUR’ANIC STUDIES 25/3 (2023), 148–168.

Teaching the Arabian Nights through Graphic Novels. In APPROACHES TO TEACHING THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, edited by Paulo Lemos Horta (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2023), 119–131.

‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir and his (Continuation of his Father’s) History of Baghdad. In ARABIC BELLES LETTRES, edited by Joseph E. Lowry and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2019), 73–93.

‘A Corpus, Not a Canon (Nor an Anthology): Creating a “Library of Arabic Literature.”’ Journal of World Literature 2 (2017) 

‘Poetry in the Modern Arab World.’  In Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture, ed. Dwight F. Reynolds (2015) 

‘The Modern Literary (After)lives of Khidr.’  In The Qur’an in Modern World Literature, ed. Helen Blatherwick and Shawkat M. Toorawa.  Special issue of the Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16/3 (2014) 

‘Tea, Shortbread and 3 Things Worth Knowing.’ The Chronicle of Higher Education (15 March 2011) 

‘The Shifa’ al-‘alil of Azad Bilgrami (d. 1200/1786): Introducing an Eighteenth-Century Work on al-Mutanabbi’s Poetry.’ Middle Eastern Literatures 11/2 (2008), 249–264

‘“Translating” The Tempest: Dev Virahsawmy’s Toufann, Cultural Creolization, and the Rise of Mauritian Kreol.’ African Theatre 3 (2000)

‘Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 629/1231).’ Edebiyât 7(2) (1996)

‘Muhammad, Muslims and Islamophiles in the Commedia.’ The Muslim World 82 (1992)

Working Languages

Arabic

French

Indian Ocean Creole

Persian

Spanish