The panel entitled “Arab Diasporic Writing: Figurations of Space and Identity” was held on Friday, February 27, at the 2004 Twentieth Century Literature conference at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Organized by Carol Fadda-Conrey, the panel featured presentations by Professor Syrine Hout and Lisa A. Weiss on two Arab diasporic writers, Rabih Alameddine and Leïla Sebbar, respectively. Syrine Hout, an associate professor of English at the American University of Beirut, presented a paper entitled “Lebanon ‘Revisited’: Memory, Self, and Other in Rabih Alameddine’s The Perv.” Singling out Alameddine as an example of Anglophone novelists of the Lebanese diaspora, Hout’s presentation handled complex themes of memory, nostalgia, the homeland, and relationships that generate binding ties in her analysis of the short stories featured in The Perv. Published in July 1999, this is Alameddine’s second work of fiction. Comprising eight short stories, The Perv presents in-depth portrayals of characters in various states of exile and displacement, both mental and physical, cultural and psychological.

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