The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria
SYRASP
The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics
Bridging the disciplines of literary studies and cultural anthropology, SYRASP researches contemporary narratives, images, social media practices, and cultural practices related to incarceration and forced disappearance in Syria under the Assad regime (1970-present).
SYRASP builds on the extensive literary canon of Syrian prison narratives and their associated scholarship to reflect, in open collaborations with prison writers and intellectuals, on the artistic, cultural, and political valences of creating, documenting, and circulating prison narratives today. The project approaches contemporary Syrian prison narratives as representational tools that cultural actors use to imagine new forms of community, or publics, in the diaspora. How do today’s practitioners seek to re-write, re-fashion, and perhaps break from the established genres, authors, and meanings of prison literature? SYRASP’s core methods incorporate dialogue with stakeholders in the Syrian cultural field and reflexivity on the position of academic research produced on Syrian literature and culture in English. Key publications from the grant will therefore include traditional academic genres (e.g., single-author articles and monographs) as well as interviews, dialogues, and reflections on the ethics of literary studies.
This project is a five-year investigation funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 851393), hosted by the Forum Transregionale Studien (Forum), and related to EUME.