Dr Hannah Scott Deuchar, BA (Oxon), PhD (New York University)

Profile

My general teaching and research interests are in translation studies; modern Arabic, Francophone, and Ottoman literatures; and critical, ecocritical, and anticolonial theory. I am particularly interested in Arabic critical theory and South-South comparative methods, and in broad questions of linguistic value and exchange.

My current research into Arabic translation takes up the philosophical problem of ‘justice’, as articulated across languages, literatures, and legal systems in the modern Middle East. Recent publications address the use of economic metaphor in twentieth-century Arabic translation theory and the nineteenth-century Arabic concept of renaissance. A chapter on Arabic and Ottoman translations of Othello in an edited volume is forthcoming, as is a project on the cultural history of the Arabic typewriter.

Prior to my arrival at QMUL I completed my PhD at New York University, where I was a MacCracken Fellow, a Social Science Research Council Fellow, and a Carola Collier Berthelot Fellow.

Teaching

In 2021-22, I am teaching the Comparative Literature Research Project module on research methods. I also welcome the opportunity to supervise postgraduate research in translation studies; modern Arabic literature; the cultural and media history of the modern Middle East; and critical, and postcolonial theory.

Research

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles

2020                ‘Loan-Words: Economy, Equivalence, and Debt in the Arabic Translation Debates’, Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 57, Issue 2, pp. 187-209. Winner: American Comparative Literature Association A. Owen Aldridge Prize

2017                ‘Nahḍa: Mapping a Keyword in Cultural Discourse’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Vol 37, pp. 50-84.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

2020                ‘Problems of Method: Applying “Western Literary Theory” to Arabic Texts’ in Lorraine Charles, Ilan Pappé, Monica Ronchi (eds.) Researching the Middle East: Cultural, Conceptual and Theoretical Issues (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 181-194.

Review Articles

2020                ‘Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt by Samah Selim’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 52, Issue 3, pp. 567-569.

Translations

2018                ‘Amerchiche’ by Karima Nadir in Marrakech Noir (Akashic Books, Noir Series).