MEC Affiliate Professor DeYoung publishes “Mahmud Sami al-Barudi: Reconfiguring Society and the Self”

Terri DeYoung, Associate Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, has just published Mahmud Sami al-Barudi: Reconfiguring Society and the Self (Syracuse University Press, 2015). Mahmud Sami al-Barudi (1838-1904) was an important Egyptian political figure and prominent poet. DeYoung charts the development of his poetry through his youth, his career in government culminating as prime minister of Egypt, his philosophical and elegiac reflections while in exile, and his return to Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century. Connecting the themes found in his more influential poems to the turbulent events of his political life and to his equally fierce desire to innovate artistically throughout his literary career, DeYoung offers a vivid portrait of one of the most influential pioneers of Arabic poetry.