Author Isabella Hammad will deliver a talk on narrative form and its relationship to discourse around Palestine and Palestinian history through the lens of Anagnorisis, or Recognition, a narrative turning point based on a moment of sudden awakening or understanding. This year’s Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture commemorates the 20th anniversary of Said’s death.

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She won the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, an O. Henry Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award, and she was recognized as a National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35.” Her work has been supported with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Hammad has taught literature and creative writing at NYU, Brown University, and Al Quds Bard College. In 2023, she was included on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, which identifies the most significant British writers under the age of 40. She is currently working on a novel set at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture is given in honor of the public intellectual and literary critic, Edward W. Said, who taught in the English & Comparative Literature Department at Columbia from 1963 until 2003. Professor Said was perhaps best known for his books Orientalism, published in 1978, and Culture and Imperialism, published in 1993, both of which made major contributions to the field of cultural and postcolonial studies. The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, organized by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, pays tribute to Professor Said by bringing to Columbia speakers who embody his beliefs and the legacy of his work.

There is a limit of one (1) reservation per person. Seating is limited and first come, first served. Priority will be given to those who register in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. Check-in begins one (1) hour before the event and early arrival is suggested.