Gail Ramsay
Professor in Arabic at Department of Linguistics and Philology
- Telephone:
- +46 18 471 10 92
- E-mail:
- gail.ramsay@lingfil.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Engelska parken
Thunbergsvägen 3H - Postal address:
- Box 635
751 26 UPPSALA - Available:
- enl. överenskommelse per epost
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Short presentation
Gail Ramsay is Professor of Arabic and areas of research include Arabic literature and society. Beginning with romantic writing and social criticism in modern Arabic literature, she has published widely on globalisation, cross-cultural writing and literary creativity in the Gulf region and analyzed Al-Jazeera’s debate program al-Ittijāh al-muʿākis (The Opposite Direction). Current research areas are Arabic blogging and ecology and environmental concern in Arabic literature.
Biography
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After Ph.D. studies in Arabic at the University of Michigan, 1990-91 and at Stockholm University 1991-96, Gail Ramsay received a Ph.D. in Arabic from Stockholm University.
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In 1997 she began teaching Arabic language and literature at Uppsala University where she received tenure as a university lecturer in 1998.
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While teaching Arabic at Uppsala and as part of a research team at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in 2004, she conducted a discourse analysis of the debate program al-Ittijāh al-muʿākis (The Opposite Direction) on Al-Jazeera Arabic satellite-television.
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In 2006, her study “Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman” was published as part of an an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, titled Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective and emanating in four volumes.
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During 2009, she was responsible for the Middle East Program at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs (UI) and represented this institute at the Euro-Mediterranean Architectures roundtable talks of the European and Mediterranean Study Commission-European Institute of the Mediterranean (EuroMesco-IEMED) titled “Towards Convergent or Divergent Evolutions?” in Barcelona this year.
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Together with media professor Kristina Riegert, Stockholm University, she researched the Arabic blogosphere in a research project titled The Nature and Impact of the Arabic Blogosphere: What Kind of Publics?, funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2010-2012.
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Since 2013 Gail Ramsay has continued to conduct research on the Arabic blogosphere in Egypt the results of which will be published in March 2017, in her book Blogs & Literature & Activism: Popular Egyptian blogs and literature in touch.
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Since 2014 a new research interest is ecology and environmental concerns in Arabic literature. Together with Arabic professor Tetz Rooke, Gothenburg University, she is in the process of planning a research project with the preliminary title Arabic Literary Imaginaries in Environmental Humanities.
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Her article titled “Breaking the Silence of Nature in an Arabic Novel: Nazīf al-ḥajar by Ibrāhīm al-Kawnī” (2014, new impression 2016) is a result of Gail Ramsay's ecocritical research.
Publications
Recent publications
- Nature and Well-Being in Times of Crisis and Unrest (2022)
- Natur och välbefinnande i kris- och orostider, Libanon och Irak (2021)
- Ecological Literacy in an Egyptian Short Story (2020)
- Frihetens lägenhet (2019)
- I spindelns rum (2019)
All publications
Articles
- Nature and Well-Being in Times of Crisis and Unrest (2022)
- Ecological Literacy in an Egyptian Short Story (2020)
- Frihetens lägenhet (2019)
- I spindelns rum (2019)
- Stenblödning (2019)
- Wasmiyya stiger upp ur havet (2019)
- Nature as a road to integration? (2019)
- What kind of Arabic and why? Language in Egyptian blogs (2013)
- Activists, Individualists and Comics (2013)
- Egyptiska bloggare (2012)
- Med bloggen som vapen (2009)
- Global heroes and local characters in short stories from the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman (2006)
- Symbolism and surrealism in literature from Bahrain (2005)
- Confining the Guest-Laborers to the Realm of the Subaltern in Modern Literature from the Persian Gulf (2004)
- Styles of expression in women's literature in the Gulf (2003)
- Literaturen im Kontext: arabisch-persisch-türkisch (2001)
- Zarys wspótczesnej nowelistyki krajów Pótwyspu Arabskiego = (An outline of contemporary short story writings of the Arabian Peninsula) (2001)
- Understanding Near Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches (2001)
- Badriyya Al-Wahaybi, Bushrā Khalfān, Ṭāhira Al-Lawātiyya: Thalāth katibāt min ʿUmān بدرية الوهيبي وبشرى خلفان وطاهرة اللواتبة ـ ثلاث كاتبات من عمان (2000)
- Barbara Michalak Pikulska: the Contemporary Kuwaiti Shorty Story in Peace Time and War 1929-1995 (1999)
- Kvinnorna har fattat sina pennor utbildning och litteratur vid Piratkusten (1997)
- En arabisk förmoder (1997)
- Mohammed al-Murr (1996)
- Yusuf al-Sibai (1996)
- Man kan inte tacka nej till en arabisk häst (1995)
- Skolböcker förmedlar fördomar (1994)
- Araberna och deras häst (1992)
- Judehat som exportvara (1992)
- Nawal El-Saadawi och hennes diktning (1991)
- Musa Sardawi (1986)
- Fem noveller av den egyptiske författaren Ihsaan Abdel Qudduus (svensk översättning) (1983)
- Om den egyptiske författaren Ihsaan Abdel Qudduus (1983)
Books
- Blogs & Literature & Activism (2017)
- From New Values to New Aesthetics (2011)
- From New Values to New Aesthetics (2011)
- The Professorship of Semitic Languages at Uppsala University 400 years (2007)
- The Novels of an Egyptian Romanticist (1996)
Chapters
- Natur och välbefinnande i kris- och orostider, Libanon och Irak (2021)
- Breaking the Silence of Nature in an Arabic Novel (2016)
- Breaking the silence of nature in an Arabic novel (2014)
- Layla and Me (2013)
- Språket, litteraturens spegel - modern litteratur i Persiska viken (2009)
- Speaking up with Yahoo (2007)
- The past in the present (2006)
- Globalisation and cross-cultural writing in the United Arab Emirates and Oman (2006)
- Women and the making of modern cultural identities in the Gulf (2005)
- Från Occident till Orient och tvärtom (2001)
- A Presentation of Yūsuf al-Sibāʿī (1993)
Conferences
- Adab al-marʿa wa-taʿsīs al-huwiyya al-waṭaniyya fī al-Imārāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida: أدب المرأة وتأسيس الهوية الوطنية في الإمارات العربية المتحدة (2001)
- Adab al-marʾa wa-taʾsīs al-huwiyya al-waṭaniyya fī al-Imārāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida: Mulakhkhaṣ (1999)
- Mulakhkhaṣ: Adab al-marʾa wa-taʾsīs al-huwiyya al-waṭaniyya fī al-Imārāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida (1999)
Other
- Semitiska språk från Bibeln till Sveriges Yttrandefrihetsgrundlag (2016)
- En modern arabisk roman (2009)
- Svensk översättning av Hoda Barakat, Vattenplöjaren (Ḥārith al-miyāh) (2008)
- Sheherazade och hennes systrar (2006)
- Svensk översättning av korta noveller av Jamal Fayez, "Förening", "Att springa i lera", "En kista av kött", "Dans på sårets kant", "Kokongen" ur ar-Raqṣ ʿalā ḥāfat al-jurḥ (1997, 2001, 2004) (2006)
- Tomas Tranströmer, Laylan ʿalā safar (2003)