Nuha Askar, Dr. des.
Nuha Askar, Dr. des.
Doctoral Researcher
Nuha Askar has recently completed her PhD at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Her dissertation is titled “Beyond the Single Story of Arab Nationalism: A DeformNational Reading of Internal Dissent in Anglophone Middle Eastern Literature" and was supervised by Prof Dr Frank Schulze-Engler. It draws an inclusive picture of the diverse cultural components of the Middle East mediated in literature, focusing specifically on the contemporary novels of Iraq and Syria. It sheds light on artistic modes of resistance to politics of exclusion and to the cultural and linguistic superiority practised by the Iraqi and Syrian autocratic regimes. Askar studied Anglophone Literatures, Cultures and Media at Goethe University and graduated with a Master degree in 2019.
Research Interests:
- Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Nationalism Studies
- Novels, Films, Media, Public Arts
Academic Experience:
• Guest teacher in the seminar “The Arab Novel of Migration” conducted by Prof. Dr. Roland Spiller and Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt in SS 2025
• Organizer and moderator of the Anglophone Arab Literary Studies (AALS) Colloquium at Goethe University in WiSe 2022/3. The project is funded by Villigst Studienwerk.
• Participant in a lecture entitled “The ‘First True Iraqi Citizen’: The Pitfalls of the Nation in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad” in virtual lecture series on Iraq issues, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) of Hamburg, Germany, April - July 2023
Publications:
• “Unsettling Identities on Refugee Routes in Omar El Akkad's What Strange Paradise", in: Touhid A. Chowdhury (ed.), Displacement, Emplacement, and Migration (Bamberg: Bamberg University Press, 2024): 41-54, https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/eee9d2d3-b9c4-4b46-8748-3082265dcadc/content.
• “The Out-of-Flock Dissident: An Interview with Kurdish–Syrian
Writer Jan Dost," Review
of Middle East Studies 56, no. 2 (2022): 403–9, https://doi.org/10.1017/rms.2023.22.
Presentations & Conference papers:
• “Contemporary Middle Eastern Imaginaries: Postcolonial? Or Anglophone World Literature?", Transcultural Englishes in a Multipolar World, ACLALS 20th Triennial Conference, the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1-5 July 2025
• “Why 'Decolonizing'?", Decolonizing Middle Eastern Studies – Critical Perspectives and Emerging Debates, The 7th Finnish Colloquium of Middle East and North African Studies, Finnish Institute in the Middle East, Tampere University, Finland, 10-11 June 2024
• “'Tell Me a Story': Queer Narratives and Countercultural Memories in Ahmad Danny Ramadan's The Clothesline Swing", The Middle East Studies Association (MESA)'s 57th Annual Meeting, Montréal, Québec, Canada, 2-5 November 2023
• “'Tell me a story': Queer Narratives Debunking National politics", Writing the Self/ Writing the English-Speaking Worlds, International Conference on Life Writing and Politics, Lille, University of Lille, France, 12-13 October 2023
• “The DeformNation Theory: The Fragmentation of the Nation in the Narratives of Postcolonial Nation-States", The Middle East Studies Association (MESA)'s 56th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, USA, 1-4 Dec 2022
• “The 'First True Iraqi Citizen': The Pitfalls of the Nation in Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad", Iraq Twenty Years After the US Invasion: Memory Politics, Governance and Protests, International Conference, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) of Hamburg, Germany, 29-31 March 2023
• “Struggle within the Nation: Language as a Rebel in Postcolonial Nation-States", International Conference on Postcolonial Studies: “Trajectories and Transitions of (Post)colonialism", London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (LCIR), Birkbeck, University of London, England , 10-11 September 2022
• “Who is the Enemy? Disassembling the Postcolonial Binaries by Self-reflexivity in What Strange Paradise", Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, 32nd Annual Conference of GAPS, Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 26-29 May 2022
• “Unsettling Identities on Refugee Routes", Displacement, Emplacement, and Migration, Interdisciplinary Conference, Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, Germany, 24-26 June 2022
• “Transgressive Modes of Border Crossing", The Ruptured Commons, ACLALS Triennial Conference 2022, Ryerson University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 11-15 July 2022
• “Dissemination: An Act of Rebellion and Breaking Boundaries in Rawi
Hage's Beirut Hellfire Society",
BREAKING BOUNDARIES:
REIMAGINING BORDERS in POSTCOLONIAL and MIGRANT STUDIES, 1st Manchester Met's Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies (MAPS), Manchester
Metropolitan University, England, 03. September 2021
Extracurricular Activities and Selected Publications of Literary Texts in Newspapers:
• Guest Speaker in a lecture entitled “Selective Silencing" in the 1st annual conference of the (DFG) Research Training Group “connect exclude": “speak" („anschließen ausschließen“: „Sprechen“) at Köln University, 1-3.12. 2022
• Three literary Texts were published in the Butzbacher Zeitung, Butzbach, Germany: “The agony of choice", “Would He Manage To?" & “Between Here and There: How Much Do We Learn from Global Stories?", 13.03.2021, 24.02.2021 & 31.12.2020 respectively
• Member of the jury in committee (B) for the selection of refugee students at Villigst Studienwerk (Villigst Academic Foundation), 04.2019 - 07.2019
• Guest Speaker at the aeWorldwide Seminar “Self-determination and Tales of Refugees" at Goethe University, 12.04.2018
• Three literary Texts were published in the Wetterauer Zeitung, Bad Nauheim, Germany: “From Loss and Hope", “The Desire to Belong", “Crossing the Borders", 23.12, 24.09 & 04.05. 2016 respectively
• Guest speaker for three years in the forum “Intercultural Weeks", organised by the specialist service “Women and Equal Opportunities" of the Women's Center Wetterau, Friedberg, Germany in 2016, 2017 & 2019
• Guest speaker in the “Share your Story" forum, organised by students at Gießen University, Germany, 14.05.2016
• “Crossing the Borders" text was nominated among the best ten-entries in worldmerit.org “share-your-story" Contest, June 2015
Awards/Scholarships/Recognitions:
• Doctoral Scholarship by Villigst Studienwerk (2021-2024)
• Approval of funding her PhD project by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) in September 2021
• Franz Adickes Stiftungsfond Award for Early Career Researchers for hiring research assistant regulated through GRADE, Goethe University, 2021
• Master Scholarship by Villigst Studienwerk (2018-2019)
• First prize winner in the “Nestby Writing Contest for the Excellence in the Study of
American Literature" organised by the American Cultural Center of
the American
Embassy in Syria in May 2001.
Professional Memberships
• GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)
• MESA (Middle Eastern Studies Association)
• EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)
• GRADE (Goethe University)
Contact:
