Tracing Palestinian Literature: An Interview with Refqa Abu-Remaileh

In this interview, Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh discusses her new project, Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature. Country of Words combines literary history, a rich and expansive set of primary sources, and digital humanities tools to trace Palestinian literature’s development in the twentieth century. Abu-Remaileh resists the de facto use of the predominant nation state framework to categorize Palestinian literature, an approach, she asserts, that is inadequate for conveying continuities between periods and literary geographies. Instead, Country of Words demonstrates the possibility of methodologies for studying the creation and dissemination of national and exilic literature beyond set physical and temporal borders. Her project primarily uses periodicals published throughout the Arab world and across the North and South American mahjars to demarcate Palestinian literature’s development into seven separate, though sometimes concurrent, periods. Coupled with the use of digital humanities tools, her project offers readers the opportunity to not only interact with a comprehensive overview of Palestinian local and global works but also consider the overlapping networks and trajectories that characterize and continue to shape this literature. This interview discusses the project’s inception, accomplishments, challenges, and impact.