This talk will discuss one of the most eccentric and brilliant figures of the nineteenth century, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyāq. To quote Kamran Rastegar, Professor of International Literary and Cultural Studies at Tufts University,  Ahmad Faris al-Shidyāq was a “Muslim-Christian. A sedentary-traveler. An ascetic sensualist. A modernist classicist. A literary gutter-mouth. A pious unbeliever.” He was, intellectually and personally, a series of irresolvable paradoxes. This talk will examine al-Shidyāq’s life and works from his time as a translator for the English Protestant missionaries' printing press in Malta (1836-1848) to his Muslim shift working for the Ottoman Empire as the editor of its Arabic language propaganda press in Istanbul (1859-1887).

AJ Naddaff, from Dedham, Massachusetts, is pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. He graduated from Davidson College in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, and received a master’s degree in Arabic literature and Near Eastern studies from the American University of Beirut in 2022. Through his writing and advocacy, AJ aspires to foster better understanding between the Middle East, Western Europe and the United States, with a focus on the public humanities, cultural entrepreneurship and academic industry building in Arabic. He worked as a reporter for the Associated Press in Lebanon, is working on his second Arabic book translation project, and has been published in the Washington Post, the Intercept, and Columbia Journalism Review among other outlets. He is a two-time Fulbright research grant recipient, a 2019 recipient of the Overseas Press Club Award, and was a 2019 fellow of the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad.