Hanan Jasim Khammas

I am a specialist of modern Arabic literature, with an emphasis on Iraqi fiction and comparisons with Anglo-American Literatures. In my research, I employ a multidisciplinary approach on the ethics and aesthetics of corporeal representations in the contemporary Arab culture. Relying on feminist studies and cultural semiotics, my f irst monograph Writing Through the Body: Iraqi Responses to the War on Terror (UB Press, 2024) offers a sociocultural and literary genealogy of the body in the Iraqi culture, highlighting its influences from Anglo-American cultural narratives surrounding the War on Terror. By utilizing Yuri Lotman’s cultural semiotics, Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’ and Hannah Arendt’s political theory, I argue for the importance of ethical representation in contemporary Arab writing, especially in its depictions of violence. In this research, I examined the works of Sinan Antoon, Hassan Blasim, Ahmed Saadawi, and Alia Mamduh, analyzing both the original Arabic texts and their English translations. Additionally, I have published four journal articles on contemporary Iraqi fiction.