Hafid Zghouli

Main research areas

Modern Arabic literature and history of ideas
Literature and society
Comparative Studies

Vita

M.A., studied German Philology, Arabic Studies and French at the University Fez from 2001 to 2003. From 2004 until 2010 he studied New German Literature and Islam Studies/arabic Studies at the University of Freiburg. He graduated with a work about reflecting relations between Orient and Okcident in Heinrich Heine. He lectured during winter semester 2011/12 and summer semester 2012 and has been working as a research associate at the Centre for Near and Middle East Studies since 2012.
Current research project

The contemporary Arabic novel in Marocco

My PhD project explores the historical novels of the Moroccan writer and poet Bensalem Himmich, focusing in particular on the aesthetic strategies employed to represent and reflect on authoritarian regimes and their impact on society from a historical perspective. Due to the violent political and social struggles that have marked Moroccan postcolonial history and the subsequent weakening of oppositional forces under a hegemonic monarchy, culture in general and literature in particular have become the most strident voice of socio-political critique.

By examining Himmich’s historical fiction within both the socio-political context of its genesis as well as that of the ‘Arab Spring’, I hope to be able to contribute to already existing scholarship on the role played by literature in the creation and consolidation of resistance narratives.