Virtual Lecture: Decolonizing Eurocentrism and Arabocentrism: Rethinking Ancient Egyptian Language and Literature by Hany Rashwan

Lecture Information

The study of ancient Egyptian language and literature has long been shaped by European intellectual traditions, which have marginalized its linguistic and literary connections to African and Semitic languages. Comparative studies between ancient Egyptian and Arabic poetics, for example, remain largely overlooked, with only a handful of scholars engaging with these links as of 2025. 

This lecture will provide a critical overview of major theories on ancient Egyptian meter, exposing contradictions in dominant 19th-century European linguistic frameworks (German, French, and English) and the religious motivations behind Euro-American comparisons between ancient Egyptian and Biblical texts—often aimed at reinforcing Biblical historical narratives. 

Beyond critiquing Eurocentrism, the lecture will also address the consequences of Arabocentrism, which has similarly distorted the region’s linguistic history. These dual biases have contributed to the underdevelopment of Arabic scholarship on ancient Egyptian literature and historical linguistics in general, limiting the field’s potential for richer, more inclusive perspectives. 

Speaker Bio

Hany Rashwan is a scholar of Comparative Poetics. He is an Assistant professor of Arabic Language and Literature at UAE University as well as Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Rediscovering Ancient Egyptian Literature through Arabic Poetics, forthcoming from AUC Press. Dr. Rashwan is the recipient of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) Research Fellowship. He earned his PhD in Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies from SOAS, University of London. Recently, he was elected for five years as a member of The Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) based in Berlin. He has been invited to lecture in numerous universities and organisations, to speak on various features of Arabic and comparative poetics, in places as prestigious as The British Library, The British Museum, Alexandria Bibliotheca, The Egyptian Museum of Cairo, and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden and Columbia. He is dedicated to engaging the public in dialogue about the role of literature in our society.

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