
The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria
SYRASP
The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics
Bridging the disciplines of literary studies and cultural anthropology, SYRASP researches contemporary narratives, images, social media practices, and cultural practices related to incarceration and forced disappearance in Syria under the Assad regime (1970-present).
SYRASP builds on the extensive literary canon of Syrian prison narratives and their associated scholarship to reflect, in open collaborations with prison writers and intellectuals, on the artistic, cultural, and political valences of creating, documenting, and circulating prison narratives today. The project approaches contemporary Syrian prison narratives as representational tools that cultural actors use to imagine new forms of community, or publics, in the diaspora. How do today’s practitioners seek to re-write, re-fashion, and perhaps break from the established genres, authors, and meanings of prison literature? SYRASP’s core methods incorporate dialogue with stakeholders in the Syrian cultural field and reflexivity on the position of academic research produced on Syrian literature and culture in English. Key publications from the grant will therefore include traditional academic genres (e.g., single-author articles and monographs) as well as interviews, dialogues, and reflections on the ethics of literary studies.
This project is a five-year investigation funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 851393), hosted by the Forum Transregionale Studien (Forum), and related to EUME.
SYRASP Publications
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McManus, Anne-Marie. 2025. New Approaches to MENA Prison Literatures After 2011.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 25, Nr. 1.
http://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4876,
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol25/iss1/1/.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2025. The Networks of Prison Narrative: Imagining Sociality and Making Narrative in Assad’s Syria.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 25, Nr. 1.
http://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4884,
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol25/iss1/9/.
Baker, Jaber. 2025. Prison as a Living Being: ‘Assad’s Syria’ as a model for the Imprisonment State.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 25, Nr. 1.
http://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4883,
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol25/iss1/8/.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2024. Race, Time, and the Petrified Subject in Algeria: Reading Frantz Fanon’s Algerian Writings and Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma (accepted version).
Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 44, Nr. 2: 287–302.
http://doi.org/1981185920/121416,
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:5-1981185920-1214166.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2024. Race, Time, and the Petrified Subject in Algeria: Reading Frantz Fanon’s Algerian Writings and Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 44, Nr. 2: 287–302.
http://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-11233080,
https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article-abstract/44/2/287/389946/Race-Time-and-the-Petrified-Subject-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2024. Towards Syrian-led Transitional Justice.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research.
http://doi.org/10.58079/12YOU,
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/54028.
Bader Eddin, Eylaf. 2024.
Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution (2011/12). Studies on Modern Orient 43. Berlin: De Gruyter.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110767698.
McManus, Anne-Marie und Khaled Barakeh. 2023. VOCAL || LAUTSTARK:: Über die MUTE Installation.
Syrische Staatsfolter vor Gericht. Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15790808,
https://zenodo.org/records/15790809 (zugegriffen: 18. Juli 2025).
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2022. Al-nuzuh: displacement as keyword.
Middle East journal of culture and communication 15, Nr. 4: 455–466.
http://doi.org/10.25673/116614,
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:5-1981185920-189651314X-18.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2022. Trauma and the 1980s in Arabic Literary Studies.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research.
http://doi.org/10.58079/UT4T,
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/38945.
Bader Eddin, Eylaf. 2022. Al-Abad: on the ongoing.
Middle East journal of culture and communication 15, Nr. 4: 367–376.
http://doi.org/10.25673/116611,
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:5-1981185920-1896513093-11.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2021. Death is Hard Work: Insolvent Violence and the Persistence of Literature.
ReadRespond.
http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15593260,
https://zenodo.org/records/15593260.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2021. On the Ruins of What’s to Come, I Stand: Time and Devastation in Syrian Cultural Production since 2011 (accepted version).
University of Chicago Press 48, Nr. 1: 45–67.
http://doi.org/10.25673/119457,
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:5-1981185920-1214151.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2021. On the Ruins of What’s to Come, I Stand: Time and Devastation in Syrian Cultural Production since 2011.
Critical Inquiry 48, Nr. 1: 45–67.
http://doi.org/10.1086/715985,
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715985.
McManus, Anne-Marie. 2021. Becoming Assemblies in Contemporary Syria. About: Mohamad Omran, Odai al-Zoubi, Jamhara/Assemblage. Dark Nights Onto Rolling Waves, Ettijahat Independent Culture, Goethe Institute, 2019.
books & ideas.
https://booksandideas.net/IMG/pdf/en_mcmanus_jamhara_22022021.pdf.