What, Where, and Wither Waqwaq? | Council on Middle East Studies Colloquium

Shawkat M. Toorawa is professor of Arabic in the departments of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Comparative Literature at Yale. He has previously taught Arabic at Duke , medieval French literature and Indian Ocean studies at the University of Mauritius, and Arabic literature at Cornell. Since 2010 he has been an executive editor of the Library of Arabic Literature, an initiative to edit and translate the premodern Arabic literary heritage. His interests include the writerly culture of Abbasid Baghdad; the literary dimensions of the Qur’an; modern poetry; science fiction film and literature; and the Waqwaq tree and islands.