Annamaria Bianco

Annamaria Bianco is a contracted professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and an associate researcher at the Institute of Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM) at the University of Aix-Marseille, as well as at the French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo) in Amman, Jordan. She is the author of several studies on the connections between Arab cultural production and the diaspora and wrote a thesis titled Adab al-malja’: Representing Refuge in 21st Century Arabic Novels. Currently being published, this manuscript earned her a special mention for the IMOMM thesis award, as well as the thesis award from AMU.

Her current research has shifted from analyzing the literary issues of exile outside the Arabic-speaking world to those of intra-Arab exile, with a particular focus on Jordan. Other areas of her investigation include humanitarian fiction and the representation of minorities in literature; literary hospitality; as well as the translation and circulation of Arabic literature (through the study of literary prizes, publishing houses, and the book market).

The Project

Title:Identity and Otherness in the Jordanian Literary Space: Writers' Trajectories and Aesthetic Representations

This postdoctoral research project aims to provide a portrait of the Jordanian literary landscape, tracing the transformations it has undergone from the mid-1950s to the present, through the lens of contemporary migrations and forced displacements.

At the intersection of Arabic cultural studies, the sociology of literature, and migration anthropology, the research is structured around three main axes:

- Examining the works and trajectories of writers in situations of refuge within Jordan;

- Mapping the literary space occupied by these authors by analyzing their intellectual networks and interactions with the Jordanian literary scene;

- Studying the representation of this foreign presence in the works of Jordanian authors themselves."

Selected publications

• Bianco, Annamaria & Cermakian, Stéphane (eds.), Exile and Translation: Perspectives on a Fertile Intersection, Paris, Classiques Garnier (2025).
• Bianco, Annamaria, The Refugee as a 'Russian Doll': Haitham Hussein’s Readings of Ghurba and Exile at the Time of the 'Global Migration Crisis, in Dakkak, Nadeen (ed.), Narratives of Dislocation in the Arab World: Rewriting Ghurba, Oxon, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2023, pp. 101-120.
• Bianco, Annamaria, At the Twilight of Humanity: Incommunicability, Hospitality, and Violence in Hoda Barakat’s Courrier de nuit, Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale, Vol. 58, June 2022, pp. 231-260. DOI: 10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2022/01/009.