Drawing on extensive archival sources and hundreds of interviews, Timothy Brennan's Places of Mind is the first comprehensive biography of Said, one of the most controversial and celebrated intellectuals of the 20th century. In Brennan's masterful work, Said, the pioneer of post-colonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine, and an erudite literary critic, emerges as a self-doubting, tender, and eloquent advocate of literature's dramatic effects on politics and civic life.

Professor Timothy Brennan will explore some of the paradoxes of the biography's reception, focusing on two ideas: Said as an Arab, not only American, intellectual; and how his study of literary and cultural theory made his very public and political successes possible.

Timothy Brennan teaches humanities at the University of Minnesota and is a member of both the departments of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, and English. He is a member of the graduate faculty of American Studies and is also affiliated with the Institute for Global Studies and the Institute for Advanced Studies. Timothy’s essays on literature, cultural politics, intellectuals, and imperial culture have appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, New Left Review, Critical Inquiry, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of Borrowed Light, Vol I: Vico, Hegel and the Colonies and Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said.

This event is organized by Columbia Global Center in Amman and cosponsored by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. 

Join the Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Center for Palestine Studies for a talk with Adania Shibli.

Adania Shibli will be joined by Layli Long Soldier and Madeleine Thien to discuss Shibli's haunting novel, Minor Detail.

Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.

Minor Detail was published in Arabic in 2017 and translated into English by Elisabeth Jacquette and published by New Directions in 2020. The novel was nominated for a National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020 and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. 

For the Helen Pond McIntyre '48 Salon, Shibli will be joined in conversation by novelist Madeleine Thien and poet Layli Long Soldier. 

Accessibility

Live transcription and ASL interpretation will be provided. Please email any additional access needs to skreitzb@barnard.edu.

This event is free and open to all. 

Streaming information will be provided closer to the date of the event.

About the Speakers 

Adania Shibli was born in Palestine in 1974, holds a PhD from the University of East London, and has published three novels in Arabic. She splits her time between Berlin and Jerusalem.

Layli Long Soldier is the author of WHEREAS. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, most recently the novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won the Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Women’s Prize for Fiction and The Folio Prize, and translated into more than 25 languages. She teaches literature and writing at the City University of New York.