DR. HANY RASHWAN Barwa Building 15, Apt. C-66, St. 904, Zone 38, Doha, Qatar | 00961 71179776 |hrashwan7@gmail.com

CURRENT POSITION

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow August 2017- Centre for the Arts and Humanities American University of Beirut EDUCATION

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies 2011 - 2016

Thesis: Literariness and aesthetics in ancient Egyptian literature: towards an Arabic-

based critical approach - Jinās as a case study.

Supervisors:

Ayman El-Desouky, Senior Lecturer in Arabic and Comparative Literature, SOAS

Stephen Quirke, Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, University College London

Stefan Sperl, Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS

Bernahrd Fuehrer, Professor of ancient Chinese Literature and Rhetoric, SOAS

Examiners:

Devin Stewart, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Emory University, USA

John Tait, Professor of Egyptology, University College London

Degree award date: 31/05/2016

Arabic certificates in Arabic rhetoric and grammar from Dar Al-’Aloum, Cairo University 2007

Helwan University, Cairo

Master of Philosophy, Ancient Egyptian Language and literature 2005- 2009

Dissertation: Ancient Egyptian poetry and its rhythmical structure through the texts

of the Middle and New Kingdoms: a comparative literary study with Arabic.

Examiners:

Ahamed Keshek, Professor of Arabic Literature and philology, Dar Al-’Aloum, Cairo University

Abdel Halim Nur el-Din, Professor of Egyptology, Cairo University

Honors: Thesis passed with a mark of 'Excellent'

Pre-Master courses in Ancient Egyptian Civilizations 2003- 2004

Bachelor of the Arts, Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations 1998 - 2002

RESEARCH INTERESTS AND CONCENTRATIONS

Translation Studies, Comparative Rhetoric, Arabic Balāgha, non-Western rhetorical theories,

Intercultural Communication, Comparative Linguistics.

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 2

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Freelance Consultant - History, language and culture of Egypt and the Arab region 2014 - Present

Providing expert advice to individuals and organizations on the history,

language, culture and politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on

Egypt. Key projects have included:

SOAS – Giving pre-deployment inductions for diplomatic staff of the Embassy of

Ireland in Cairo, to ensure that they have a good grasp of recent political and

economy contexts of Egypt. These tailored briefings cover the recent political

situation of Egypt, the historical and political background, customs and

traditions, religion, aid and development in Egypt.

The British Museum – Working with the Department of Ancient Egypt and

Sudan on knowledge dissemination for the Amara West archaeological site,

including the translation into Arabic of a comprehensive excavation report

aimed at the local Sudanese audience, and visitor interpretation panels for an

on-site orientation area.

El Ahram Newspaper, Cairo

Journalism Intern 2008 - 2009

Training in news/feature writing, covering: where to find news, teasing the

reader, characteristics of effective writing, meeting the brief, finding a hook,

communicating the message, using quotes, and good Arabic structure

Researching news articles and leads

Collating data and information to be used by reporters

Supporting editorial staff in all activities leading to publication

Helwan University, Cairo

Research Assistant 2004 - 2008

Conducting research on the revival of ancient Egyptian music and songs

Translating Ancient Egyptian poems and song lyrics from Hieroglyphic to Arabic

Producing a Hieroglyphic-Arabic dictionary of musical terminology and instruments

Developing educational texts for the University's Diploma in ancient Egyptian Music

Restoring Historic Cairo

Restorer & Inspector 2003 - 2004

A UNESCO funded project to restore Historic Cairo

Undertaking restoration work in historical mosques and churches

After one year, promoted to Inspector supervising the restoration of the Palace

of Prince Taz, a Mamluk period palace in Historic Cairo.

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 3

SCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, American University of Beirut 2017

International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) Research Fellowship 2015

SOAS Grant for fieldwork, supporting six months of research on Arabic 'Rhetoric' in Egypt 2012

SOAS fully-funded Scholarship, covering all tuition fees and living expenses 2011 - 2014

Robert Anderson Research Trust Fellowship, supporting research at the British

Museum for two months (accommodation and living expenses) 2010

CONFERENCE AWARDS

International Society for the History of Rhetoric (London) Conference Award 2017

SOAS Faculty of Languages and Cultures conference grant 2015

International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Tübingen) Conference Award 2015

SOAS Faculty of Languages and Cultures conference grant 2014

International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media, Turin 2014

SOAS-Felix Foundation Conference Award 2014

Steven Larkman Award (Toronto), the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 2014

SOAS Faculty of Languages and Cultures conference grant 2013

PUBLICATIONS

Books

Literariness and aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian literature: Arabic Jinās in post-Eurocentric poetics.

(English), American University in Cairo Press. (2018)

I have signed a publishing contract with AUC University Press to publish my thesis as a monograph, after

rigorous reviews: Antonio Loprieno (University of Basel), Fayza Haikal (AUC University), Donald Reid

(University of Washington). The book has received some endorsements and is expected to be published

in 2018.

"Since the days of Champollion, Westerners have found it natural to draw on ancient and

modern Indo-European terminology and comparisons for studying the language and

literature of ancient Egypt. A century ago, pioneering Egyptian Egyptologist Ahmad

Kamal Pasha gained little traction for his plea to compare ancient Egyptian with Arabic,

a kindred language from within the same phylum (now known as Afro-Asiatic). Now

the time is surely ripe for Hany Rashwan‟s bold postcolonial challenge—that applying

the Arabic concept of wordplay (Jinās) to ancient Egyptian texts can yield literary and

linguistic insights which have thus far eluded his fellow Egyptologists." (Donald

Malcolm Reid, professor of Middle East history, University of Washington)

“Dr Rashwan offers a fresh perspective on ancient Egyptian literature of the second

millennium BC by comparing stylistic devices of the Pharaonic era with Arabic jinās. He

shows with a wealth of individual examples that the commonalities between ancient

Egyptian and Arabic might be much stronger than has previously been acknowledged.

Set against a discussion of Eurocentrism in Egyptology, the book will be of great interest

for Egyptologists, researchers from comparative literature and all those who seek to

develop new routes into the study of ancient Egypt, beyond Western models. This is an

exciting and innovative book. Dr Rashwan has opened a new window into the study of

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 4

ancient Egyptian literature.” (Richard Bussmann, Professor of Egyptology, University of

Cologne)

"By creatively re-reading ancient Egyptian texts through the lens of the classical Arabic

poetic tradition Dr. Rashwan has, in a new and surprising manner, been able to reconnect

the culture of Arab Egypt to that of its Pharaonic past and thereby unearthed a continuity

of vision which is grounded in a distinctly similar approach to the use of poetic language.

In doing so has revealed new layers of meaning that are essential for an adequate

understanding of the literary merit of the ancient texts. Particularly striking is the manner

in which Dr. Rashwan‟s work treats the pictographic quality of the script as one

additional semantic layer which operates in tandem with the rhetorical devices that

function at the linguistic level. Dr. Rashwan‟s book is a landmark study which paves the

way for an altogether new, more inclusive and integrated understanding of Egypt‟s

cultural history." (Stefan Sperl, Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS)

"At last my haunting desire to see a good study on analogies between Ancient Egyptian

and Arabic literary sensibilities and taste has been fulfilled. Many articles on the topic

did not seem to attract significant attention, but this book cannot be ignored. In his

groundbreaking research Hany Rashwan has thoroughly explored Arabic Jinās/wordplay

(for lack of a better translation) and its counterpart in Ancient Egypt, showing the

importance oriental cultures give to the sound as well as to the image a word conveys

through specific repetition or additions usually ignored, disliked, or condemned by

Western rhetoric. By contrasting Oriental and Western artistic sensibilities, Rashwan

incites researchers‟ curiosity and invites them to better appreciate international literature.

Jinās is but one literary device in comparative Balāgha. This book thus opens up new

approaches to study the different literatures of the world through a better understanding

of the way different peoples express themselves: a critical factor in the era of

globalization." (Fayza Haikal, Professor of Egyptology, AUC)

"In this ground-breaking study, Dr Hany Rashwan thoroughly and systematically

compares the ancient Egyptian and Arabic traditions of literary „word-play‟. This is the

first time that the workings of these devices in Egyptian texts has been scientifically

explored by looking to Arabic practices, rather than by uncritically relying upon western

traditions of rhetoric. The approach is original and innovative, and the results are very

fruitful. The book has much to offer in the way of insights for the understanding and

interpretation of Egyptian textual material. New avenues of research are opened up,

which cannot be ignored in future work on style and expression in Egyptian literature,

and a fresh light is cast upon on the whole nature of the methods of composition of our

Egyptian texts." (John Tait, Emeritus Professor of Egyptology, University College

London)

"This groundbreaking book uses the conceptual world of classical Arabic poetics („ilm

al-Balāgha) to “decolonize the overwhelming, illogical divorce between linguistic and

literary studies” of Ancient Egyptian. Challenging centuries of Eurocentric projections,

including the restrictive understanding of genre that has impaired our ability to engage

with non-European literatures on literary terms, Rashwan has introduced a set of tools for

reading Ancient Egyptian that scholars prior to him have by and large ignored. In using a

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 5

forgotten and misunderstood body of literary theory to bring alive literary texts from

antiquity, [insert title] is a masterful contribution, not only to Ancient Egyptian poetics,

but also to the postcolonial Arabic literary canon." (Rebecca Gould, Professor of Islamic

World and Comparative Literature, University of Birmingham)

Ancient Egyptian Poetry and Its rhythmical structure. (Arabic), Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture

of Egypt. (In print)

The book presents the first Arabic-language translations of seven Ancient Egyptian poems. It shows how

the linguistic kinship between Arabic and ancient Egyptian can play a critical role in reproducing the

intended meaning of the literary expressions.

Articles in peer reviewed journals

Rashwan, Hany. “The role of Comparative-Historical Rhetoric in reconstructing ancient Egyptian rhetorical

systems.” to appear in Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric (expected 2018).

Rashwan, Hany. “Ramesside visual poetics and Eurocentric propaganda: observations on a hymn carved

twice to Ramses II in Abu Simbel temple.” to appear in Journal of Near Eastern Studies (under review).

Conference proceedings

Rashwan, Hany. "Philosophical and literary argumentation methods in the ancient Egyptian rhetorical

systems." Proceedings of the first European Conference on Argumentation and reasoned action, Institute

of Philosophy (IFILNOVA), Lisbon,2015, edt. D. Mohammed & M. Lewioski, Vol. II, London: College

Publications, (2016): 849-863.

Rashwan, Hany. “Ancient Egyptian visual literariness between the unspoken and the untranslatable.” to

appear in Cambridge University Press, Edited by Matthew Reynolds, Sowon Park, and Adriana X. Jacobs:

Proceedings of the Prismatic Translation Conference, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation

(OCCT), St Anne’s College Oxford (expected 2018).

Other publications

Rashwan, Hany. “A new rhetorical reading of the Zigzag Stela of Ramses II (Tanis V, Face c).” Society for

the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Newsletter, no. 2, (Spring 2014): 1-6.

Translation

Spencer Neal, Anna Stevens and Michaela Binder. Amara West: Living in Egyptian Nubia. London:

Trustees of the British Museum, 2014, 112 pages (English to Arabic).

Under preparation

Thornton, Elizabeth, and Rashwan, Hany. “Poetic reversals, from hieroglyphics to graphic novels: towards

a new criticism of artful inversions of signs and sounds.” to be submitted to Poetics Today: International

Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication (under preparation).

Rashwan, Hany. “Morphological wordplay between the nature of the language and the author's

intentionality in ancient Egyptian and Arabic literatures.” to appear in Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur

(under preparation).

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 6

Rashwan, Hany. “Visual literariness: a dialogue between ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and alphabetic

Arabic.” to appear in Journal of the American Oriental Society (under preparation).

Rashwan, Hany. “Rethinking the unutilized semantic role of ancient Egyptian - Arabic cognates.” to be

submitted to Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (under preparation).

Rashwan, Hany. “Formalism and Arabic Balāgha: the unexplored relationship.” to be submitted to Journal

of Arabic Literature (under preparation).

INVITED LECTURES AND PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Ring compositions in Ancient Egyptian literature in comparison with Arabic.

The British Museum: Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, London, 4 August 2017. (Invited by Dr.

Neal Spencer)

Rediscovering the Ancient Egyptian forms of wordplay by using Arabic Jinās.

University of Oxford: Faculty of Oriental Studies, Egyptology and Ancient Near East department, 6 March

2017. (Invited by Professor Richard Parkinson)

Redefining the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian 'wordplay' using Arabic Jinās.

University of Cambridge: Division of Archeology, Egyptology and Assyriology department, 3 March 2017

(Invited by Dr. Rune Nyord)

Reading the original Eloquent Peasant story with a showing of the Shady AbdEl Salam film.

The Egyptian Cultural and Education Bureau: London, 16 September 2016.

Visual Untranslatability of Ancient Egyptian erotic poetry.

University of Leiden: Institute of Area Studies, 7th Coffee Break Conference: Comparisons Across Time

and Space, 8-10 September 2016.

Ancient Egyptian scripts and literature.

Birkbeck University of London: Birkbeck Staff Development Day, 3 July 2015.

Cultural and Linguistic untranslatability in ancient Egyptian poems.

The British Library: Africa Writes 2014, Africa in translation: Poetry in (e)motion, the Royal African

Society’s annual African literature and book festival, London, 11-13 July 2014. (Invited by Dr. Wangui wa

Goro)

Ancient Egyptian poems: dancing with words - semantically and metrically.

The British Museum: Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, London, 20 August 2010. (Invited by Dr.

Vivian Davies)

CONFERENCE ORGANISATION

Ancient Egypt in a Global World. Current Research in Egyptology XV, University College London and

King's College London, 9-12 April 2014.

Critical Methods Beyond Eurocentrism. First annual postgraduate conference of the Centre for Cultural,

Literary and Postcolonial Studies, SOAS, 14 June 2013.

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 7

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Rethinking the notion of 'literariness' in the ancient Egyptian and Arabic literatures.

What is literariness?: International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL), Institut d'études

avancées de Paris, 10-13 October 2017.

Comparative Balāgha: Decolonizing Eurocentric poetics in the ancient Egyptian literature.

The Spaces of Rhetoric: Twenty-First Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of

Rhetoric, Queen Mary-University of London, 27-29 July 2017.

Ancient Egyptian visual literariness between the unspoken and the untranslatable.

Prismatic Translation: Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) in collaboration with the

European Humanities Research Centre (EHRC), St Anne’s College Oxford, 1-3 October 2015.

Beyond the Eurocentric: New approaches for revealing the literary rhetorical system of ancient Egypt.

Rhetoric across Cultures: the Twentieth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of

Rhetoric (ISHR), University of Tübingen, 28-31 July 2015.

Philosophical and literary argumentation methods in the ancient Egyptian rhetorical system.

Argumentation and Reasoned Action: The First European Conference on Argumentation (ECA), Institute

of Philosophy (IFILNOVA), New University of Lisbon, 9-12 June 2015.

Rethinking the role of cognates in reading ambiguous ancient Egyptian literary passages.

Current Research in Egyptology XVI, University of Oxford, 15–18 April 2015.

Thinking in equivocal circles: Arabic Jinās (paronomasia?) as an ancient Egyptian literary device.

Ancient Egyptian Language and Texts 6, University College London, Institute of Archaeology, 22

November 2014.

A critical response to the misinterpretation of ancient Egyptian persuasive language and its literary

devices.

The Language of Persuasion: Linguistic Approaches to Its Theory and Practice in the Classical World,

University College London, 10–12 September 2014.

Towards a new critical understanding of ancient Egyptian rhetorical literary devices.

14th Conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media (IGEL),

University of Torino, Turin, 21-25 July 2014.

A pure visual Rhetoric: the hapax nnkttyw and its literary phonetic graphic metaphor.

Current Research in Egyptology XV, King's College London, 9-12 April 2014.

Cultural Linguistic identity of ancient Egyptian rhetoric under the dominance of Greco-Roman

traditions.

Africa Research Network (AfNet) 2014 Africa Research Day, University College London, 17 March 2014.

New approaches to reconstructing ancient Egyptian rhetorical devices.

First Birmingham Egyptology Annual Symposium, University of Birmingham, 21 February 2014.

DR. HANY RASHWAN PAGE 8

The role of Comparative-Historical Rhetoric in reconstructing ancient Egyptian rhetorical literary

devices.

Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars’ Colloquium, University of Toronto, 10-12 January

2014.

A new rhetorical reading of the Zigzag Stela of Ramses II (Tanis V, Face c).

Current Research in Egyptology XIV, University of Cambridge, 19-22 March 2013.

The question of the literary beyond time, space and genres in a dead language: ancient Egyptian

texts.

World literature conference series: Networks of Circulation, SOAS (London)/University of California

(Santa Barbara)/INALCO (Paris)/NYU (Abu Dhabi), 13-15 December 2012.

Can Arabic philological methods give a closer perspective to ancient Egyptian poetry?

Worldscapes Conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 10 March 2012.

LANGUAGES

English – Fluent

Arabic – Native tongue

German – Upper Intermediate: Grundstufe certificate, 9 Levels from Goethe Institute, Cairo. Two levels

in oral and written translation from the Aegyptishe-Deutsche Kultur centre (German-Arabic).

French – Intermediate: 7 levels from the French Institute of Cairo.

Other – I have also studied 3 levels of Italian, 2 levels of Spanish and 2 levels of Russian.

ACADEMIC TRAINING

SOAS Professional Development Course: Effective Communication Skills 2013

SOAS ADD Course: Academic Teaching Development, GTA Training Programme 2012-2015

UNIVERSITY SERVICE

SOAS Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies, giving induction presentations to new research

students in the Centre. They were designed to encourage my colleagues to think more critically about the

notion of 'modernism and Eurocentrism' in studying the Ancient non-Western texts (2014-2015).

SOAS Research Student Society, Activities Committee (2012/2013).

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP

International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR)

British Comparative Literature Society (BCLA)

International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL)

Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (SSEA)

American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR)