Mrs Catherine Cobham

Mrs Catherine Cobham

Mod Lang Honorary Lecturer

Researcher profile

Email
cmc1@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Teaching

Catherine currently teaches both Arabic language (at the honours level) and modern Arabic literature, in the following modules: Advanced Arabic Language, Arabic Short Stories, Exile and Identity, Palestinian Fiction. She currently contributes to two modules in Comparative Literature and has also taught modules on the Postcolonial Arabic Novel in English translation and contributed to subhonours language and literature teaching.

Research areas

Catherine's research area is modern Arabic fiction. She has published papers on aspects of the writing of Naguib Mahfouz, Abdelilah al-Hamdouchi and Hanan al-Shaykh, among others. Over the last few years she has had a particular interest in Iraqi novels and short stories written by the generation of writers who came to prominence between the 1950s and 1970s, notably Gha’ib Tu’ma Farman, Fu’ad al-Takarli,  Mahdi Isa al-Saqr and Muhammad Khudayyir. Catherine's work is distinguished by an emphasis on detailed textual analysis, by its understanding of the literary and cultural context of the works analysed (including the way they are received by contemporary critics in the Arab world), and by its ability to draw on modern literary critical themes and approaches. She has also translated numerous works by modern and contemporary Arab writers, including Mahmoud Darwish, Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh and Fuad al-Takarli.

Selected publications

 

See more publications