Astrid Ottosson al BitarAssociate professor
About me
I am Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Cultures and Languages, at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. I have worked at the department since 2007 after having received my doctoral degree in Semitic languages at the University of Uppsala.
After having studied theology for a number of years (leading up to a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1988) I started in the late1980s to study Semitic languages, focusing on Arabic, at Uppsala university. During the years 1991-1997 I lived in Damascus, studying and working at IFEAD (l´Institut Francais d´Études Arabes de Damas) where I was responsible for the institute's collection of maps.
Teaching
I teach classes in Arabic language ability and text reading on first and second cycle studies. I also teach classes in Middle Eastern and North African Studies, such as Middle Eastern and North African Literature and Textual sources (master level).
Research
My field of research is modern Arabic literature, focusing on literature of exile as well as women´s literature. and literature for Young Adults.
In my doctoral thesis I Can Do Nothing against the Wish of my Pen. Studies in the Short Stories of Widād Sakākīnī (2005) I discussed the literary work of Widād Sakākīnī (1913-1991), an early woman writer from Lebanon/Syria, focusing on the literary strategies used by the author to conform to the dominant male discourse within which she was working while preserving her own identity as a woman writer. In my thesis I used structuralist theories (Greimas' model for interpreting the narrative plot) as well as poststructural theories about intertextuality (Genette and Culler).
In my research on Arabic literature in exile I concentrated on Iraqi writers, mainly novelists, living in Sweden looking at how they in their literary work create a new interpretation of their homeland Iraq as well as their new abode, Sweden. One literary strategy often used is magical realism.
I have also an interest in literature for teenagers, so called Young Adult literature, a quite new genre in the Arab world.