Dr Matthew L Keegan
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drkeegan.bsky.social
Dr Matthew L Keegan
@drkeegan.bsky.social
Professor of Arabic Lit, reader of riddles, lecturer of the ostensibly old and obscure. Formerly in the bad place: Lit_as_Adab https://barnard.academia.edu/MatthewKeegan (Opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.)
Reposted by Dr Matthew L Keegan
"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."
September 9, 2025 at 4:44 PM
My first monograph "Before World Literature" will be released by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2026. I hope it will be of interest to folks in comparative literature, Islamic studies, and classical Arabic literature.
www.pennpress.org/978151282887...
September 6, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Some advice from the 12th century for authors...

لا تحسبنْ أنّ بالكتـــــــــــــــــــــــــب مثلنا ستصير
فللدجاجة ريشٌ ولكنها لا تطير

Don't ever think that
the likes of us will live on
through books.

The chicken has feathers,
But it cannot fly.

- Ibn al-Dahhān (d. 1174 CE)
August 2, 2025 at 6:31 PM
For those interested in Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies in West Africa, I recommend Sulaiman A. Alagunfon's study of the Arabic Maqāma. It shatters a lot of myths about Arabic literature and Islamic education. My foreword to the book can be found here: www.academia.edu/129479952/Fo...
Foreword to Sulaiman A. Alagunfon's "The Classical Arabic Maqāma in Yorubaland, Nigerias "
A foreword to Sulaiman Adewale Alagunfon's book on the Maqāma in Yorubaland, Nigeria. I sought to highlight some of Dr. Alagunfon's unique contributions while emphasizing how this study might ...
www.academia.edu
May 23, 2025 at 5:25 AM
Muhammad Amin al-Khanji, who died in 1939, was a prolific publisher of classical Arabic texts. He also became a manuscript trader who shaped the major collections of Egypt, Europe, and America. My colleagues at the IAS have been working on this amazing project -- described in the linked article.
A Window into Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Manuscripts Transactions
On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a team of librarians from the American University in Cairo (AUC) arrived at the al-Khanji Bookstore in downtown Cairo to oversee the transfer of a rare archive document...
www.ias.edu
April 22, 2025 at 4:13 AM
Archiving posts from the hellsite: An article of mine was selected in 2023 as the article of the month over at The Mediterranean Seminar. The article is "Rethinking Poetry as (Anti-Crusader) Propaganda." www.mediterraneanseminar.org/2023-june-ar...
2023 June - Article of the Month — The Mediterranean Seminar
2023 June - Article of the Month
www.mediterraneanseminar.org
April 1, 2025 at 2:12 AM
I'll be posting some material from the old hellsite because I was trying to post pre-publication material and to summarize already-published stuff that people might not available. I'll start with Leo Africanus’s Cosmography. The recent translation had some glancing citations of my scholarship.
February 8, 2025 at 7:38 AM
I'm working on a 13th-century manuscript of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq — transmitted from the author al-Sarrāj to the most famous female scholar of the age Fakhr al-Nisāʾ to the copyist Ibn al-Khayyir. Extensive reading & audition notes throughout the MS. I'll be posting provisional transcriptions for fun!
Transcription challenge (and a distraction from it all). I've been working on transcribing some samāʿāt but still lots of uncertainties. More on this manuscript to come IA. It is a copy of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq with a riwāya that goes through Fakhr al-Nisāʾ. Suggestions welcome #arabic #مخطوطات
February 8, 2025 at 5:45 AM
Transcription challenge (and a distraction from it all). I've been working on transcribing some samāʿāt but still lots of uncertainties. More on this manuscript to come IA. It is a copy of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq with a riwāya that goes through Fakhr al-Nisāʾ. Suggestions welcome #arabic #مخطوطات
February 8, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Happy to have helped in a tiny way with this translation of Leo Africanus’s Cosmography, in which there is a glancing reference to a commentary on Al-Hariri’s Maqamat… that thing I wrote my dissertation about.
August 3, 2023 at 11:36 PM
In the Prettyman courthouse today there was talk of the co-conspirator Cheesebro. These names… I can’t.
August 3, 2023 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew L Keegan
@arablit.bsky.social is here!!! Follow them for content to brighten your feeds with Arabic literature (in English) :)
August 1, 2023 at 12:35 PM
Welcome to August, y’all. It’s the Sunday Scaries but for a whole month…
August 1, 2023 at 11:01 PM