Queer and Trans Case Studies in Early Modern Literature, an interdisciplinary speaker series supported by Comparative Literature, Early Modern Studies, and the English Renaissance Colloquium, is excited to welcome Abdulhamit Arvas (University of Pennsylvania), who will be giving a talk entitled “Gender Variance and Race in Translation: The Case of al-Hasan al-Wazzan/Leo Africanus” on Thursday, February 20th at 4:30 PM in HQ 136.
Please also save the date for a lunch/workshop for graduate students with Professor Arvas at 11am-12:30pm, Friday, February 21st. Please reach out to patrick.soto@yale.edu with any questions.
Professor Arvas’ talk will focus on the North African diplomat, scholar, traveler, and prolific writer, Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, mostly known in Europe as Leo Africanus, who wrote Cosmographia et Geographia de Affrica on the geography, history, culture, and social life in North and West Africa during his captivity in Italy. The book became a bestseller upon its publication under the title La Descrittione dell’Africa (The Description of Africa) in 1550, and since then, has appeared in at least thirty editions in eight languages. This talk will trace a distinct group of gender-nonconforming hoteliers as they appear in al-Hasan al-Wazzan’s manuscript and its various translations into European languages. Beyond illustrating the flow of information about Africans, Leo’s work and its circulations exemplify how non-western epistemologies and figurations infiltrated into Europe and contributed to shaping gender, sexual, and racial formulations there. Tracing such exchanges, this talk will remark upon sexual and gender trouble revealed in the book’s multiple translations and editions while highlighting the transformation of the ambiguously gendered, racialized, and sexualized figurations of early modernity to fit into clearly defined binary identities of western modernity.