Professor Geert Jan van Gelder FBA

Middle Eastern and African Languages and Literatures Middle East

Fellow type: UK Fellow
Year elected: 2005
Sections: Africa, Asia and the Middle East

Summary

Born in Amsterdam in 1947, Geert Jan van Gelder studied Semitic Languages (with Arabic as main subject) at the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden (doctorate Leiden, 1982). He was employed as Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Groningen from 1975 until 1998, when he was elected Laudian Professor of Arabic, University of Oxford and became a Professorial Fellow of St John's College. He retired from the Laudian Chair in 2012 and returned to the Netherlands in 2015. He has published widely on Classical Arabic Literature, especially belles-lettres, poetry, poetics, stylistics, and the history of genres and themes.

Current post

Laudian Professor of Arabic Emeritus, University of Oxford

Past appointments

University of Oxford Laudian Professor of Arabic

1998 -

University of Oxford Laudian Professor of Arabic, University of Oxford

1998 -

University of Oxford Laudian Professor of Arabic Emeritus, University of Oxford

1995 -

University of Groningen, Netherlands Lecturer in Arabic

1975 - 1998

University of Amsterdam

1973 - 1975

Publications

Abu l-`Ala' al-Ma`arri, The Epistle of Forgiveness, ed. and tr. (with Gregor Schoeler) New York, 2013

Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology New York, 2013

Sound and Sense in Classical Arabic Poetry Wiesbaden, 2012

Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem 1982

The Bad and the Ugly: Attitudes towards Invective Poetry (Hija) in Classical Arabic Literature 1988

Close Relationships: Incest and Inbreeding in Classical Arabic Literature 2005

Other Fellows of the British Academy

Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger FBA

Medieval Hebrew manuscripts from the East and the West: palaeographical, codicological and historical studies

Professor Graham Furniss FBA

Oral and written literatures of Africa; orality, performance and genre in the popular cultures of West Africa with particular reference to Hausa-speaking regions of Nigeria and Niger

Professor Hugh Kennedy FBA

The History and Archaeology of the early Islamic Middle-East, North Africa and Spain c.600-1000 AD

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