Teaching Politically

Culture is inextricable from politics. This includes the politics of who we are, as teachers, intellectuals, writers, cultural workers, and students, and what we want to bring to and take from the site of instruction. It also includes the politics of who we want to be, as citizens, professionals, and active contributors to our communities and to the world in general, and what we can be, realistically, in the particular contexts in which we live. Teaching Politically addresses some of the political constraints that shape our pedagogical spaces, especially in the teaching of literature. The book brings together a global group of academics, activists, public intellectuals, poets, and novelists to examine the way politics manifest pedagogically, and how a commitment to educating manifests politically, in and beyond the classroom. At the heart of the discussion is how political and professional paradigms chafe against, intersect with, or otherwise become inseparable from each other in any vocation that attempts to educate: from writing, journalism, and public speaking to art, activism, and medicine. Contributors: Dimitris Christopoulos, Dimitri Dimoulis, Khaled Fahmy, Rishi Goyal, May Hawas, Bonnie Honig, Mona Kareem, Benjamin Mangrum, Nora Parr, Bruce Robbins, Ahdaf Soueif, Omid Tofighian, Elahe Zivardar

May Hawas is Associate Professor in World Literature at the University of Cambridge, and Valerie Eliot Fellow of English at Newnham College. She is the author of Politicising World Literature: Egypt between Pedagogy and the Public (Routledge: awarded the Anna Balakian Prize, 2022) and The Diaries of Waguih Ghali (American University in Cairo Press, 2 vols., 2017–18), in addition to a number of articles and essays; editor of The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History (2018); and coeditor, with Theo D’haen, of the special issue of The Journal of World Literature, “What Is World Literature―of Arabic?” (2017). She has taught in Egypt, the US, and England, and is a former EUME fellow (FU Berlin).

Bruce Robbins is Old Dominion Foundation Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He was educated at Harvard University and previously taught at the universities of Geneva and Lausanne and Rutgers University. His most recent book is Atrocity: A Literary History (Standford University Press, 2025). A collection of essays entitled Cosmopolitanisms, coedited with Paulo Horta (NYU Press), came out in 2017. His other books include Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction (Stanford University Press, 2022), The Beneficiary (Duke University Press, 2017), Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence (2012), Upward Mobility and the Common Good (2007), Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress (1999), Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture (1993), and The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below (1986). He is the director of a 2012 documentary entitled “Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists,” available at bestfriendsfilm .com, and another short film about the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, “What Kind of Jew Is Shlomo Sand?,” which came out in 2020 and is available at mondoweiss.com.

Dimitris Christopoulos is a Greek scholar, writer, and public intellectual. He is Professor of State and Legal Theory at the Panteion University of Athens, Dean of the Political Science Faculty, and former President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH 2016–19). His writings on human rights, the far right, minorities, migrants, and citizenship have appeared in Greek, English, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Albanian, and Serbo-Croatian. His many books include Droit, Europe et minorités―Critique de la connaissance juridique (Sakkoulas, 2000), Η ετερότητα ως σχέση εξουσίας [Otherness as a power relation] (Kritiki, 2002), Ποιος είναι έλληνας πολίτης; Το καθεστώς της ελληνικής ιθαγένειας από την ίδρυση του ελληνικού κράτος στις αρχές του 21ου αιώνα [Who is a Greek citizen? The status of Greek nationality from the creation of the Greek state to the dawn of the 21st century] (Viviliorama, 2012), Στο ρίσκο της κρίσης―Στρατηγικές της αριστεράς των δικαιωμάτων [At risk in the crisis―Left human rights strategies] (Alexandreia, 2013), and H κρίση των δικαιωμάτων [The crisis of rights] (Χbooks, 2015). He is coauthor of Προσφυγικό: “θα τα καταφέρουμε”; Ένας απολογισμός διαχείρισης και προτάσεις διεξέδου [Refugees: “Will we make it?”: A management account and recommendations for a way out] (Papazisis, 2016), and 10 + 1 Eρωτήσεις & Απαντήσεις για το Μακεδονικό [10 + 1 Questions & answers on the Macedonian Question] (Polis, 2018). Christopoulos is also cofounder of the Minority Groups Research Centre (KEMO), the first Greek independent think tank on minority issues, and a regular contributor to international and Greek media and the press.

Dimitri Dimoulis is an academic and writer. Born in Athens (November 1965), Juris Doctor (University of Saarland, 1994). Professor at the São Paulo Law School of the Fundação Getulio Vargas since 2007. Director of the Brazilian Institute of Constitutional Studies (Instituto brasileiro de estudos constitucionais). In addition to specialized legal studies, including on freedom of expression and censorship, he has published the books Nations, classes, politics: The dialectics of war (in Greek, coauthor, Kritiki, 1995); Justiça de transição no Brasil: Direito, responsabilização e verdade (coauthor, Saraiva, 2010); Estado de direito e desenvolvimento (editor, Saraiva, 2011); States against workers: The Greek crisis (in Greek, coauthor, Taxideutis, 2016); Karl Marx and the Classics: An Essay on Value, Crises and the Capitalist Mode of Production (coauthor, Ashgate, 2017); Direito de igualdade: Antidiscriminação, minorias sociais, remédios constitucionais (Almedina, 2023).

Khaled Fahmy is Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East at Tufts University. He is a historian of the modern Middle East and an active contributor to the press in Arabic and English. His books and articles deal with the history of the Egyptian army in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the history of medicine, law, and urban planning in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Egypt. He charts the specific ways in which a modern state was established in Egypt and the manner in which Egyptians accommodated, subverted, or resisted the institutions of this modern state. He is also a prolific writer for the press in Arabic and English, on social media, and on his blog (www .khaledfahmy .org). He has taught at Princeton, NYU, Columbia, and Cambridge, and is a fellow of the British Academy. His books include In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (University of California Press, 2018), Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt (Oneworld, 2012), and All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1997).