Professor Margaret Larkin is a scholar of Arabic literature whose work covers both the classical and modern periods and deals with texts composed in both literary Arabic and Egyptian colloquial Arabic. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989. She also studied at the American University in Cairo. Her areas of particular interest include: iʽjāz al-Qur’ān (the stylistic inimitability of the Qur’an); the poetry of Abu’l-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī (d. 965 CE); and the literature of the Mamlūk era, especially popular poetry.
Her publications include: The Theology of Meaning: ʽAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s Theory of Discourse; Al-Mutanabbi: Voice of the ʽAbbasid Poetic Ideal, and “The Dust of the Master: A Mamlūk-Era Zajal al-Ghubārī.” In 2010 Larkin was named the Bayard Dodge Distinguished Visting Professor in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo.
Selected courses taught at Berkeley:
Graduate Seminars:
Medieval Arabic Literary Theory
Al-Jāḥiẓ
The Meaning of “al-Turāth”
Modern Moroccan Literature of Arabic and French Expression
Arab Women Poets, Pre-Islamic to Modern
Ibn al-Rūmī
Al-Mutanabbī
Undergraduate Courses:
The Golden Age of Classical Arabic Literature
Wonder and the Fantastic: The Thousand and One Nights in World Literary Imagination
Introduction to Islam
Introduction to Classical Arabic Poetry
Introduction to Classical Arabic Prose
The Literary Voice of Modern Palestine
