This talk is one piece of a manuscript-in-progress on the cultural history of Syrian film and literature, 1963-2013. I will explore some of the escapades of writer, actor, comedian, and public intellectual Durayd Lahham, from his earliest work with Nihad Qalʿi during the mid-twentieth century through his various comic roles and cultural contributions to postcolonial Syria up until the recent past. Through a multidisciplinary reading of his films as well as his comedic significance and influence, the lecture aims to re-frame both the cultural history of Syria and the global history of comedy.
Max Weiss is Associate Professor of History and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi`ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (Harvard UP, 2010), and co-editor (with Jens Hanssen) of Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge UP, 2016) and Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (Cambridge UP, 2018). His most recent translations include works by Dunya Mikhail, Nihad Sirees, Mamdouh Azzam, and Samar Yazbek. Currently he is writing about the intellectual and cultural history of modern Syria, and translating, among other works, Alawiya Sobh, So This is What Love Is, for Seagull Books.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies