Join us on Wednesday, April 27th for a conversation between scholar Alia Mossallam and writer Edwin Nasr, moderated by translator and Callie’s resident Katharine Halls. The participants will come together to discuss Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s first translated anthology, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021.

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated assembles the first translations of Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s writings into English, including essays, social media posts, and interviews. Rising to prominence through his writing and activism during the Egyptian revolution of 2011, Alaa is perhaps Egypt’s most high-profile political prisoner. Embodying the voice of a generation that has been defined by struggle against a failing system, Alaa’s writings present a prescient account of the frontlines of a decade of upheaval, while drawing a roadmap for revolution in our technocratic era. The panel discussion will explore the revolutionary potential of Alaa’s writings and his ongoing struggle while incarcerated.

Alia Mossallam is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. Her main academic inquiry has been centred on how history, especially of resistance, can be re-imagined and re-written through the ranks of the verbal, the sung, and more broadly, the vernacular. Her PhD thesis covered the period between 1956 and 1974, which marked formative post-colonial struggles and their most contemporary embodiment in the Arab-Israeli wars.

Edwin Nasr is a writer and cultural practitioner based between Amsterdam and Berlin. Their recent essays have explored cinematic modes of production in the Arab region, the geopolitics of image-making, and decolonial praxis and aesthetics. They are currently a fellow at De Appel in Amsterdam, and a curator at CCA Berlin. Their writing has recently appeared in Afterall Journal, n+1, The Funambulist, and Bidoun.

Katharine Halls is an Arabic-to-English translator. She is the recipient of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation of Haytham El-Wardany’s Things That Can’t Be Fixed. In 2017, Halls was awarded the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation for her translation, with Adam Talib, of The Dove’s Necklace by Saudi author Raja Alem. Learn more about Katharine Halls.