{"word_count": 268, "character_count": 1805}
by Georges KhalilAmir Moosavi is presenting his current work on "Reimagining a War: Negotiating Ideology and Disenchantment in Literary Narratives of the Iran-Iraq War" that looks at the  literature produced by the Iran-Iraq War in Arabic and Persian prose-fiction. Moosavi compares war time literature and cultural policies of the Iraqi Ba’thist regime and the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1980s and the ways that official government-sponsored narratives of the war used by both regimes affected cultural production at that time and in the postwar era.[caption id="attachment_467" align="alignleft" width="300"] Amir Moosavi at the Summer Academy in RabatBoth Photos: Georges Khalil underCC BY-NC-SA 4.0[/caption]Moosavi shows through close readings of literary texts also how writers in Iran and Iraq have attempted to subvert, through literature, authoritarian discourses that exploit religion and nationalism in both countries. The city and memory of the war have been and become the sites to challenge the ideologies of official literature and propaganda, turning war literature in the urban setting into a literature of mourning and trauma.&#160;&#160;&#160;Amir Moosavi is currently completing his PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from NYU and a BA in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  During the 2013-14 academic year he was visiting instructor of Arabic language and literature at Bard College and during the 2014-15 academic year he will be a fellow at the NYU Humanities Initiative.Georges Khalil is the Academic Coordinator of the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin and Scientific Coordinator of the research program Europe in the Middle East - the Middle East in Europe (EUME).&#160;&#160;&#160;