Staff profile

Research and Creative Practice

I have a primary research specialism in the medical humanities, cultural disability studies, and cultural representations of death and dying, with a focus on the Middle East. I also work on global and postcolonial 20^th and 21^st century cultural texts and contexts, on post-criticism/the creative-critical and on cultural representations of Islamism.  In addition, I am a practicing playwright and have extensive experience of collaborating with theatre practitioners and visual artists.

 My monograph The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature (Syracuse University Press, 2014) is the first major study of female physical illness and disability in contemporary Arabic literature of the Levant and Egypt from 1950 to the present. It has been described as “a rich and provocative work that makes a much-needed intervention … and fills an epistemological gap” (International Journal of Middle East Studies); “a fascinating and significant intervention” (Journal for the Society of Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World; and “a richly detailed and engaging analysis” (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies). I have also co-edited a collection of essays (with Lindsey Moore) entitled Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World (Routledge, 2015).

 In 2017, I began work on a research project that extends my interests in Middle Eastern literatures, visual culture and the medical humanities: a cultural history of cancer in the Arab world. This project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its Open World Research Initiative. One strand of the project  Performing Arab Cancer, which is grounded in arts-based-research, was shortlisted for the AHRC / Wellcome Trust 2020 Medical Humanities Awards in the Best International Research category. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted with female cancer patients from the Arab world, Performing Arab Cancer deploys creative, performative, visual and critical practice to generate a ‘living archive’ of Arab female cancer stories and testimonies. As part of my work on this strand, I wrote, produced and curated a series of creative arts outputs – including two ethnodramas, a film and a video installation – in collaboration with international artists, healthcare practitioners and cancer NGOs to highlight women’s subjective experience with cancer. For further details, see my ethnodrama I am Waiting For You and the video installation Hair Talk. I have also published a number of outputs on the biopolitics of cancer, on Arab women’s cancer activism in art, music and theatre, and on staging cancer testimonies.

 Some of my research on illness narratives, disability representation and dead bodies has appeared in Textual Practice, Medical Humanities, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction and Journal for Cultural Research. A number of my plays and short stories have also appeared in Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings , CALLALOO:  Journal of African Diaspora , and BRAND . My play The Silicone Bomb was performed in Beirut, Alexandria and Amman and my ethnodramas Wasafuli al-Sabr [I Am Waiting for You] and Hair Talk (which accompanied a video installation of the same name) on Arab women’s cancer experiences were staged to the public and at various hospitals in Beirut, Lebanon.

 Current Projects

I am currently working on a book-length project (provisionally entitled DIS-ARAB-ILITIES) which will offer the first account of modern and contemporary representations of disability in the Arab World. The project maps the shifting aesthetic, representational and symbolic position of the disabled body in Arab literary, visual and media texts from novels, through popular TV franchises, to pop music and celebrity culture. By means of a series of national and cultural case studies from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, the project situates disability portrayal within the larger political, social and gendered story of the modern Arab world via specific spatio-temporal moments such as the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, the collapse of Arab nationalism after the 1967 Arab defeat, the US invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and the rise of Islamism in the region. The book also seeks to bear witness to the birth of new and empowering Arab discourses around disability rights.

 Before coming to Durham University, I taught at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and the University of Manchester.  I was also a research associate on the AHRC/ESRC “Islamism in Arab Fiction and Film” project at Lancaster University. I have an MA in English Literature (American University of Beirut) and a PhD in the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East (SOAS, University of London).

Teaching and Supervision

I have experience teaching and supervising dissertations and postgraduate work in the areas of modern Middle Eastern literatures and cultures; film and visual culture; world literature and drama; cultural disability studies; medical humanities; masculinities; women’s literary and visual texts; exile, migration and diaspora; motherhood studies; children and childhood; and cultural activism. I also welcome enquiries for PhD work on any of these related areas as well as on more specific fields related to my research specialisms and all within the 20^th and 21^st century period.

• Death and Dying in Literature and Visual Culture
• Modern Middle Eastern Literatures, Film and Cultures
• Illness and Disability
• Creative-Critical
• Religion and Literature/Film
• Gender
• Postcolonial Literature and Film
• World Literature and Drama

• 2021 - 2025: Member of the Advisory Group for the Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Discovery Award.:
• 2020: Performing Arab Cancer project is shortlisted for the AHRC / Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards in the Best International Research category.:
• 2020 - 2025: Member of the Advisory Board for The Disability Under Siege Network Plus:

Authored book

• The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2014). The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature. Syracuse University Press.

Book review

• Review of Contemporary Arab Women Writers: Cultural Expression in Context. By Anastasia Valassopoulos.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2012). Review of Contemporary Arab Women Writers: Cultural Expression in Context. By Anastasia Valassopoulos. Women: A Cultural Review, Special Issue on Transnational Feminisms, 23(1), 102-104.
• Media Warfare. Review of Channels of Resistance in Lebanon: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media. By Zahera Harb.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2012). Media Warfare. Review of Channels of Resistance in Lebanon: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media. By Zahera Harb. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 5.
• Review of In the House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by Arab Women Writers. By Fadia Faqir
  
  Hamdar, A. (2000). Review of In the House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by Arab Women Writers. By Fadia Faqir. Al-Raida., XVII(89).

Chapter in book

• Imagining Islamism: Representations of Fundamentalism in the Twenty-First Century Arabic Novel.
  
  Bradley, A., & Hamdar, A. (2016). Imagining Islamism: Representations of Fundamentalism in the Twenty-First Century Arabic Novel. In M. Knight (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion. (pp. 446-456). Routledge.
• 'Those Who Cure You Will Kill You':The Doctor and the Terrorist in Arab Fiction and Film.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2015). ’Those Who Cure You Will Kill You’:The Doctor and the Terrorist in Arab Fiction and Film. In A. Hamdar & L. Moore (Eds.), Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World. (pp. 123-137). Routledge.
• Exile, Home and Identity: Constructing Alternative Spaces in Hamida Na'na's The Homeland.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2003). Exile, Home and Identity: Constructing Alternative Spaces in Hamida Na’na’s The Homeland. In K. Seigneury (Ed.), Crisis and Memory: The Representation of Space in Modern Levantine Narrative. (pp. 211-222). Reichert Verlag.

Edited book

• Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World.
  
  Hamdar, A., & Moore, L. (Eds.). (2015). Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315726731

Journal Article

• Uyun Teta: Blindness, sightedness and the stories in-between
  
  Hamdar, A. (2025). Uyun Teta: Blindness, sightedness and the stories in-between. Medical Humanities. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2025-013300
• Breaking Taboos: Arab Breast Cancer Activism in Art and Popular Culture
  
  Hamdar, A. (2024). Breaking Taboos: Arab Breast Cancer Activism in Art and Popular Culture. Journal of Medical Humanities, 45, 403–420. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09886-6
• The Missing Corpse in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad and Muhsin Al-Ramili’s Daughter of the Tigris
  
  Hamdar, A. (2024). The Missing Corpse in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad and Muhsin Al-Ramili’s Daughter of the Tigris. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 65(5), 957-968. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2023.2269833
• Prostheses of disability: Islamic fundamentalism and the disabled body in postcolonial Arab fiction
  
  Hamdar, A. (2023). Prostheses of disability: Islamic fundamentalism and the disabled body in postcolonial Arab fiction. Medical Humanities., 49(4), 604-612. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2022-012516
• Severed Heads in Iraqi Diasporic Visual Production: Aleiby, Baldin and Alsoudani
  
  Hamdar, A. (2023). Severed Heads in Iraqi Diasporic Visual Production: Aleiby, Baldin and Alsoudani. Textual Practice, 37(8), 1181-1201. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2022.2115545
• Staging Silence: Arab Women's Cancer Experience
  
  Hamdar, A. (2021). Staging Silence: Arab Women’s Cancer Experience. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 41(2), 197-211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2019.1683348
• 'Voice of Resistance': Rim Banna, Cancer, and Palestine's Body Politic
  
  Hamdar, A. (2020). ’Voice of Resistance’: Rim Banna, Cancer, and Palestine’s Body Politic. Medical Humanities., 46(3), 234-242. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2019-011649
• Between Representation and Reality: Disabled Bodies in Arabic Literature
  
  Hamdar, A. (2019). Between Representation and Reality: Disabled Bodies in Arabic Literature. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 51(1), 127-130. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743818001186
• The Syrian Corpse: The Politics of Dignity in Visual and Media Representations of the Syrian Revolution
  
  Hamdar, A. (2018). The Syrian Corpse: The Politics of Dignity in Visual and Media Representations of the Syrian Revolution. Journal for Cultural Research, 22(1), 73-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2018.1429083
• “We are all Hizbullah now”: narrating the Party of God
  
  Hamdar, A. (2014). “We are all Hizbullah now”: narrating the Party of God. Journal for Cultural Research, 18(2), 158-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2013.851852
• The Switzerland of the Middle East: Play
  
  Hamdar, A. (2012). The Switzerland of the Middle East: Play. MovingWorlds: Journal of Transcultural Writings, 12(Special issue on Asylum).
• The Colour of Scrambled Eggs: A Dramatic Monologue
  
  Hamdar, A. (2012). The Colour of Scrambled Eggs: A Dramatic Monologue. Medical Humanities., 38.
• Female Physical Illness and Disability in Arab Women's Writing.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2010). Female Physical Illness and Disability in Arab Women’s Writing. Feminist Theory, 11(2), 189-204. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700110366816
• Representations of Women, Gender and Islamic Cultures in Films: Lebanon.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2010). Representations of Women, Gender and Islamic Cultures in Films: Lebanon. Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures Online.
• The Silicone Bomb: Play
  
  Hamdar, A. (2010). The Silicone Bomb: Play. Callaloo, 4(32).
• The Smell of her Urine: Short Story
  
  Hamdar, A. (2010). The Smell of her Urine: Short Story. MovingWorlds: Journal of Transcultural Writings., 10(Special Issue, Ten Years Forward.).
• The Sushi Meal: Short Story
  
  Hamdar, A. (2009). The Sushi Meal: Short Story. Brand Literary Magazine, 5.
• Jihad of Words: Gender and Contemporary Karbala Narratives.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2009). Jihad of Words: Gender and Contemporary Karbala Narratives. Yearbook of English Studies, 39(1/2), 84-100.
• The Hole Beside her Lady Zeinab: Short Story
  
  Hamdar, A. (2008). The Hole Beside her Lady Zeinab: Short Story. MovingWorlds: Journal of Transcultural Writings, Pillars of Light: Exploring Muslim Cultures, 1(8).
• Under the Heat of the Scorching Sun: Short Story
  
  Hamdar, A. (2006). Under the Heat of the Scorching Sun: Short Story. MovingWorlds: Journal of Transcultural Writings, Telling Stories, Telling Lives, 1(6).
• Masculinity, Manhood and Machismo in Radwan el-Kashef's Film Arak el-Balah
  
  Hamdar, A. (2004). Masculinity, Manhood and Machismo in Radwan el-Kashef’s Film Arak el-Balah. Al-Raida., XXI: What about Masculinity(104-105), 113-117.
• The Gender Sensitive Fact File: Profiles of the Arab League Countries.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2003). The Gender Sensitive Fact File: Profiles of the Arab League Countries. Al-Raida., 100(20), 93-137.
• Marriage, Madness and Murder in Alia Mamdouh's Mothballs and Salwa Bakr's The Golden Chariot.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2001). Marriage, Madness and Murder in Alia Mamdouh’s Mothballs and Salwa Bakr’s The Golden Chariot. Al-Raida.
• Women Centers in Jordan.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2000). Women Centers in Jordan. Al-Raida., 90-91(17-18), 15-19.
• Rashid al-Daif
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Rashid al-Daif. The Literary Encyclopedia. Advance online publication.
• Hassan Daoud
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Hassan Daoud. The Literary Encyclopedia. Advance online publication.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Hair Talk. Video Installation. Video Concept and Direction by Dima Alansari, Technical Director Suha Choucair. 4-7 February. Naef K. Basile Cancer Institute, AUBMC. Beirut, Lebanon.
  
  Hamdar, A. (in press). Hair Talk. Video Installation. Video Concept and Direction byDima Alansari, Technical Director Suha Choucair. 4-7 February. Naef K. Basile Cancer Institute, AUBMC. Beirut, Lebanon [Video].
• Short Film: Wasafuli al-Sabr. Directed by Soha Choucair & Lina Abyad. Edited by Moonshot Post-Production.
  
  Hamdar, A. (in press). Short Film: Wasafuli al-Sabr. Directed by Soha Choucair & Lina Abyad. Edited by Moonshot Post-Production [Film].

Performance

• Hair Talk. Performance Piece . Directed by Lina Abyad.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2020). Hair Talk. Performance Piece . Directed by Lina Abyad [Performance]. Naef K. Basile Cancer Institute - AUBMC. Beirut, Lebanon.
• Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr [Eng. Title: I am Waiting For You]. Directed by Lina Abyad. 1 December.
  
  Hamdar, A. (2018 – 2018, December 1). Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr [Eng. Title: I am Waiting For You]. Directed by Lina Abyad. 1 December [Performance]. Nabih Berri Government University Hospital, South Lebanon.
• The Silicone Bomb. Directed by Lina Abyad
  
  Hamdar, A. (2010). The Silicone Bomb. Directed by Lina Abyad [Theater performance]. 7th Creative Independent Forum in Alexandria; and the Amman International Theatre Festival AITF in Jordan.
• The Silicone Bomb. Directed by Lina Abyad
  
  Hamdar, A. (2009). The Silicone Bomb. Directed by Lina Abyad [Theater performance]. The Lebanese American University of Beirut, Gulbenkian Theatre. Further performances at the Hamana Festival in Lebanon; the 12th International Theatre Festival at the Lebanese American University; and Madina Theater in Beirut.
• Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr [Eng. Title: I am Waiting For You]. Directed by Lina Abyad. 8 February.
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr [Eng. Title: I am Waiting For You]. Directed by Lina Abyad. 8 February [Performance]. Naef K. Basile Cancer Institute -AUBMC, Beirut, Lebanon.
• Wasafuli al-Sabr (Eng. title: I am Waiting for You). Directed by Lina Abyad. 19 July - 29 July.
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Wasafuli al-Sabr (Eng. title: I am Waiting for You). Directed by Lina Abyad. 19 July - 29 July [Performance]. Madina Theater, Beirut.
• Lecture Performance: I Want to Tell You Something.
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Lecture Performance: I Want to Tell You Something [Lecture Performance]. 15th EACLALS TRIENNIAL CONFERENCE 2014, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck.
• Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr (Eng. Title: I am Waiting for You). Directed by Lina Abyad. 8 August.
  
  Hamdar, A. (n.d.). Hospital Performance: Wasafuli al-Sabr (Eng. Title: I am Waiting for You). Directed by Lina Abyad. 8 August [Performance]. Lebanese American University Medical Centre-Rizk Hospital, Beirut.