Dana Al Shahbari

Dana’s research focuses on the recovery of May Ziadeh, an overlooked Lebanese-Palestinian writer and literary salon hostess from the early twentieth century. She aims to highlight Ziadeh’s significant contributions to al-Nahda movement, or the Arab Renaissance, while also revisiting and challenging the narrative of madness associated with Ziadeh’s name. Dana further examines the impact of madness on the judgment of Ziadeh’s intellectual value while tying it to the association of madness to women throughout history. Her research fosters a tradition of studying and translating overshadowed Arab women writers, and its methodology draws from different fields of Arabic literature, rhetoric, translation, archives, as well as Nahda and postcolonial studies.