Judith Naeff
University Lecturer International Studies
- Name
- Dr. J.A. Naeff
- Telephone
- +31 70 800 5485
- j.a.naeff@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-7659-5819
Judith Naeff is Assistant Professor Cultures of the Middle East at Leiden University with a main interest in contemporary Arabic visual culture and literature. She has worked mainly on cities & urban imaginaries and memory & temporality.
Research
Literature and visual culture of the modern and contemporary Middle East.
Intellectual history and memory cultures of the Arab left.
Cities and city cultures in the Middle East.
Judith Naeff investigates generational dialogues about the legacies and memories of labour, student and communist movements in the Arab world. The research focuses in particular on video and installation art by young makers born in the 1980s that address the generation of their parents and the events that took place in the 1970s.
The monograph "Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut: A City's Suspended Now" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) explores a shared experience of time and space in contemporary Beirut (1990-2015) and the ways in which this experience has been given meaning in works of literature, arts and culture. The book conceptualizes "the suspended now" as the experience of a stretched-out present, cut off from a past that seems at once unresolved and inaccessible, and from a future that is radically uncertain. It argues that this experience has often been understood as a transitional phase, a period of recovery from a near-absolute traumatic rupture in anticipation of a future release. More and more often, however, the suspended now is understood to be continually reproduced by conditions that structurally expose the urban environment to harm. From narratives of underground journeys to exclusionary real estate advertisement, and from a sprawling city of concrete toy blocks to a vampire movie, the cultural objects discussed in the thesis do not only imaginatively express Beirut's suspended now; they also critically reflect upon its conditions and creatively imagine ways to live ethically in Beirut's precarious environment.
Curriculum vitae
Employment
2017 - present - University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) Cultures of the Middle East, Leiden University.
2016 - 2017 - Lecturer Cultures of the Middle East, Leiden University.
2016 - 2017 - Lecturer Visual Culture. Radboud University Nijmegen.
2011-2016 - PhD fellow (fully funded). University of Amsterdam.
Fall 2015 and Summer 2017 - Lecturer Literature. University College Utrecht.
2014-2015 - Lecturer Arabic Studies. Hogeschool van Amsterdam.
2006-2011 - Translator AR-NL, Translators collective AICA, Amsterdam.
Education
2011-2016 - PhD, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.
2011 - RMA (cum laude), Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam.
2011 - MA (cum laude), Arabic Language & Culture, University of Amsterdam.
2006- BA (cum laude), Arabic Language & Culture (Minor Literary Studies), University of Amsterdam
University Lecturer International Studies
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Institute for Area Studies
- SMES APT
- Naeff J.A. (2023), Remembering defeat in counter-revolutionary Egypt, Middle East Critique 32(1): 53-69.
- Naeff J.A. (2023), Review of: Lenssen A. (2020), Beautiful agitation: modern painting and politics in Syria. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. International Journal of Middle East Studies 55(1).
- Naeff J.A. (2022), Revolutionary reenactment: militant futures past in Rania and Raed Rafei’s 74 (the reconstitution of a struggle), Regards: la revue des arts du spectacle 27: 19-36.
- Naeff J.A. (2022), Beeldromans in de Arabische diaspora, Armada: tijdschrift voor wereldliteratuur 2022(2): 16-18.
- Naeff J.A. (2021), Temporality and Landscape, Di'van | | A Journal of Accounts (9): 12-21.
- Naeff J.A. (2021), Urban recovery at the mall: displacement and solace in Beirut's spaces of consumption. In: Al-Harithy H. (Ed.), Urban Recovery: Intersecting Displacement with Post War Reconstruction. London: Routledge. 376-396.
- Naeff J.A. (2021), Mens en milieu in literatuur uit het Midden-Oosten en Noord-Afrika, ZemZem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam 17(1): 79-89.
- Naeff J.A., Ree A. van, Sipkes L., Strava C., Tromp K. & Westmoreland M.R. (2020), Dissonant entanglements and creative redistributions . In: Kuoni C., Baltà Portolés J., Khan N.N. & Moses S. (Eds.), Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World. Amsterdam: Valiz. 71-96.
- Naeff J.A. (2020), Time, Space, and Subaltern Phenomenology in the Documentary Film Essay 'Taste of Cement', Frame: Journal of Literary Studies 33(1): 69-85.
- Naeff J.A. (2020), Precarious Chronotopes in Beirut: a comparative spatio-temporal analysis of Rafic Hariri’s grave and nightclub B018, Contemporary Levant 5(1): 64-76.
- Naeff J.A. (2020), Politiek en archeologisch erfgoed in Jeruzalem. In: Bent J. van & Hart T. (Eds.), Jeruzalem, Jeroesjalajiem, Al-Quds: De heilige stad door de eeuwen heen no. Zenobiareeks 7. Hilversum: Verloren.
- Naeff J.A. (2020), Review of: Kuroki H. (ed.) (2015), Human Mobility and Multiethnic Coexistence in Middle Eastern Urban Societies: 1. Tehran, Aleppo, Istanbul, and Beirut.. Studia Culturae Islamicae no. 102. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Bibliotheca Orientalis 77(3/4): 403-406.
- Naeff J.A. (2018), Arabisch literair meesterwerk en mondiale "petrofictie": Abdelrahman Munifs Cities of Salt wordt door een nieuwe lens gelezen, ZemZem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam 14(2): 138-144.
- Naeff J.A. (2018), Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut: A City's Suspended Now. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Naeff J.A. (2018), Ibrahim el-Salahi en de heroverweging van de kunsthistorische canon, ZemZem. Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam 14(1): 180-189.
- Naeff J.A. (2018) Een roadtrip door verscheurd Syrië. Review of: Khalifa Khaled (2017), De dood is een zware klus. Amsterdam: De Geus - Oxfam Novib. Het Grote Midden-Oosten Platform .
- Dibazar P. & Naeff J.A. (Eds.) (2018), Visualizing the Street: New Practices of Documenting, Navigating and Imagining the City. Cities and Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Naeff J.A. (2018), Writing Shame in Asads Syria, Arab Studies Journal 26(2): 128-146.
- Naeff J.A. (2016), Disposable Architecture - Reinterpreting Ruins in the Age of Globalization: the Case of Beirut. In: Lindner C. & Meissner M. (Eds.), Global Garbage: Urban Imaginaries of Waste, Excess, and Abandonment. London: Routledge. 221-236.
- Naeff J.A. (2015), Review of: Eksell K. & Guth S. (2011), Borders and Beyond: Crossings and Transitions in Modern Arabic Literature. Mîzân. Studien zur Literatur in der islamischen Welt no. 21. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Bibliotheca Orientalis 72(5-6): 787-790.
- Naeff J.A. (2014), Absence in the Mirror: Beirut's Urban Identity in the Aftermath of Civil War, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 18(5): 549-558.
- Dibazar P., Lindner C., Meissner M. & Naeff J.A. (2013), Questioning Urban Modernity, European Journal of Cultural Studies 16(6): 643-658.
- mede-hoofdredacteur