Roger Allen Elected President of the Middle East Studies Association
January 2009
Roger Allen, Professor of Arabic and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, has been elected president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA)—an international, non-profit, non-political learned society dedicated to promoting scholarship and encouraging public understanding of the Middle East region and its peoples.
Allen was elected president by MESA’s membership in an October vote, with results announced at the close of the organization’s annual conference in November. Taking on immediate duties as MESA’s president-elect, Allen will assume the role of president beginning in November 2009.
The first person to obtain a doctorate in modern Arabic literature at the University of Oxford, Allen joined the Penn faculty in 1968. Much of his career has been devoted to studying modern Arabic fiction, as well as improving Arabic language teaching methods in American universities and colleges. He also served as faculty director of Penn’s Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business from the program’s inauguration in 1994 through 2006.
In addition to a major study on the Arabic novel and an anthology of critical writings, entitled Modern Arabic Literature, Allen has published many articles and produced a number of translations of modern Arabic literary works, including Naguib Mahfouz’s Mirrors and Autumn Quail, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s The Ship and Abd al-rahman Munif's Endings. His current research concerns issues pertinent to the broader field of Arabic literature, such as the challenges of evaluating literary works in light of post-colonial complexities and the status of the short story—and fiction in general—in an era of alternative means of publication and new media.