Judith Naeff

Background

In January 2011 Judith Naeff completed her MA Arabic Language and Culture (cum laude) and MPhil Literary Studies (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on novelistic representations of homes in war-torn Beirut. She studied for several months in Cairo (NVIC) and Beirut (AUB and USJ). As a member of the Cities Group, Judith is currently working as a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA).

Cities Project

PhD research

Judith's research project is provisionally titled "Contemporary Urban Experience in Beirut" and investigates the post-civil-war development of the city as produced by and the product of lived experience. Representations of and critical responses to the built environment in works of art and literature will direct an exploration of various aspects of Beirut's urban experience. The tension between political and artistic visions on how the cityscape of post-civil-war Beirut should be reshaped is of particular importance.

Other issues of concern are urban alienation, public space, precarity, (traumatic) memory and history, ruins and apocalypse.

This research project is under the supervision of


Prof. dr. Christoph Lindner

Dr. Richard van Leeuwen

Activities

Together with Pedram Dibazar, Miriam Meissner and Christoph Lindner, Judith is currently involved in organizing the conference "Questioning Urban Modernity" which will take place on May, 18.


Questioning Urban Modernity