We are thrilled that Karen Grumberg has received an honourable mention from the Modern Language Association Prize for an Edited Collection for her title Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past.
The committee’s citation for Middle Eastern Gothics reads:
Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past reorients the literary mode of the Middle Eastern gothic by using as its frame of reference a robust but neglected body of writing in Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian. Through a practice of relational reading, the volume assesses the limits of the global as a structuring term, explores transnational parallels by centering the gothic in non-European sites of production, and explicates the haunting themes of trauma, catastrophe, and violence grounded in the histories of these regions. The contributions in Karen Grumberg’s edition cover works from pre-Islamic Arabia to post-9/11 America to offer astute readings of literary traditions, texts, and histories that not only recenter the gothic but also situate better-known works such as Aḥmad Saʿdāwī’s Frānkishtāyn fī Baghdād (Frankenstein in Baghdad) within a corpus of previously inaccessible works. Relevant to multiple disciplines, Middle Eastern Gothics will be a valuable teaching tool.
The full press release can be downloaded here: MLA Prize for an Edited Collection Press Release
Middle Eastern Gothics is part of our Gothic Literary Studies series. Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing ground-breaking scholarship on Gothic literature and film, and to promoting challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which question the traditional or perceived critical orthodoxy of a genre which plays an important role in understanding literary, intellectual and cultural histories.