Saree Makdisi

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Saree Makdisi
OccupationProfessor
GenreRomanticism
ParentsJean Said Makdisi and Samir Makdisi

Saree Makdisi (born 1964) is an American literary critic and professor specializing in British Romanticism.[1] He is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent.[2] He also writes on contemporary Arab politics and culture.[1] Makdisi is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[3]

Life

Makdisi was born in Washington, United States.[4] His father, Samir Makdisi, is a Lebanese-Palestinian professor of economics at the American University of Beirut and his mother, Jean Said Makdisi, is a Palestinian independent scholar (formerly of Beirut University College). He is also the grandson of Anis K. Makdisi, a late professor of Arabic at American University of Beirut and the nephew of the late literary scholar Edward Said.[1][5] In 2009, Makdisi gave the Edward Said Memorial lecture at the University of Adelaide.[6]

He spent his early childhood in the United States, moving to Lebanon at the age of eight. While he grew up in a Christian family, they lived "in a largely Muslim neighborhood of Beirut."[4] Makdisi returned to the United States for his final year in high school and also attended college there.[4] He received his Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in 1987 and a PhD from Duke University in 1993.[3] He taught for ten years as a professor of English at the University of Chicago before joining UCLA in 2003.[5] His work has been commended for his application of psychoanalytic theory, including the theories of Freud and Lacan, to MENA societies.[7]

On November 26, 2023, Makdisi with his two brothers, Karim and Ussama, began hosting a podcast entitled Makdisi Street [8]

Books

Awards

Notes

  1. "Excavating Memory in Jerusalem". The University of Sydney. Archived from the original on October 30, 2009.
  2. "Saree Makdisi". Text Publishing. Retrieved May 18, 2026.
  3. "Makdisi, Saree". UCLA English. Retrieved May 18, 2026.
  4. Makdisi, Saree (2008). Palestine inside out: an everyday occupation. New York: W.W. Norton. p. xv. ISBN 978-0-393-06606-7.
  5. "Saree Makdisi: Professor and commentator". IMEU. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007.
  6. Adams, Phillip (September 16, 2009). "Saree Makdisi - Edward Said Memorial". ABC listen. Retrieved May 18, 2026.
  7. Gottreich, Emily (July 14, 2023). "Makdisi, Saree. Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial". Arab Studies Quarterly. 45 (3). doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.45.3.0244. ISSN 0271-3519.
  8. "Makdisi Street". YouTube. November 26, 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
  9. Young, Brian (2001). "Review of Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity; Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830; British Imperial Literature 1870-1940: Writing and the Administration of Empire". The Review of English Studies. 52 (208): 551–556. ISSN 0034-6551.
  10. "William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s, Makdisi". The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
  11. "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation by Saree Makdisi". Publishers Weekly. March 10, 2008. Retrieved May 18, 2026.
  12. "Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture, Makdisi". The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
  13. Lincoln, Andrew (July 3, 2017). "Saree Makdisi, Reading William Blake". Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. 51 (1). doi:10.47761/biq.195. ISSN 0160-628X.
  14. "Tolerance Is a Wasteland by Saree Makdisi - ePub + PDF". University of California Press. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
  15. "2009 Arab American Book Award Winners". Arab American National Museum. December 1, 2019. Retrieved May 18, 2026.