Bg

Omar Sabbagh

Associate Professor of English

School of Arts & Sciences

English Division

Hero_Thumnail

PhD in English Literature, King’s College, University of London
MA in Philosophy,
Birkbeck College, University of London
MA in Creative and Life Writing, 
Goldsmith’s College, University of London
MA in English Literature, King’s College, University of London
BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics,
University of Oxford

Dr. Sabbagh has taught at the American University in Dubai (AUD) since Fall of 2014, first as Assistant Professor of English, then, after promotion in 2018, as Associate Professor of English.  Before joining AUD, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he taught from 2011-2013.

When at AUB, Dr. Sabbagh taught courses in: ‘Creative Writing’; ‘The Novel’; ‘20th Century Literature’; and ‘Poetry as an Academic Genre.’  Since coming to AUD, Dr. Sabbagh has taught ‘Introduction to Literature’, ‘Introduction to Philosophy’, ‘Creative Writing’, ‘Modern British Literature’ and ‘Auto/Biography’, as well as many English Composition courses.

Dr. Sabbagh is a widely published poet, writer and critic. From 2006 to the present his poetry has appeared in many prestigious venues, such as: Agenda, Banipal, Kenyon Review Online, PN Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Stand, The Moth, The Reader, The Warwick Review, The Wolf, (T&F) New Writing, New Humanist, Two Thirds North, and Acumen, among others.  Apart from interests and work in contemporary creative writing (in both verse and prose), Dr. Sabbagh’s academic research interests lie in aspects of in the main British Literature from, roughly, 1870–1950.

In his free time, Dr. Sabbagh reads, thinks and writes.

Selected publications: 

Books:

  • [Forthcoming] [2020] To My Mind, Or, Kinbotes: Essays on Literature [Whisk(e)y Tit] (collation of published essays)
  • Reading Fiona Sampson: A Study in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics [Anthem Press, July 2020] (monograph)
  • But It Was An Important Failure [Cinnamon Press, Feb. 2020] (poetry collection)
  • Minutes from the Miracle City [Fairlight Books, July 2019] (novella)
  • To The Middle of Love [Cinnamon Press, Feb. 2017] (poetry collection)
  • Via Negativa: a parable of exile [Liquorice Fish, March 2016] (novella)
  • From Sight Through to In-Sight: Time, Narrative and Subjectivity in Conrad and Ford [Brill, 2014] (Revised PhD thesis)
  • The Square Root of Beirut [Cinnamon Press, Feb. 2012] (poetry collection)
  • My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint [Cinnamon Press, Sept. 2010] (poetry collection)


Selected Articles and Other Published Prose:
 

  • ‘Translations “About” Ghassan Zaqtan: On the Powers of Laughter’, published in The Wolf, Spring 2013, Issue 27.
  • ‘Dancing About Rodin’, on Patricia McCarthy’s Rodin’s Shadow, published in Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 109, Spring 2013.
  • ‘The Beirut Cadenzas: Refractions From Damaged Life’, Creative Nonfiction piece, in (Routledge) POEM,  1, Issue 2.
  • ‘Love’s Knowledge: Realisation Beyond Defence: Durrell’s ia Quartet After, and Beyond, Ford’s TheGood Soldier’ – Book Chapter, published in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: Centenary Essays, ed. Max Saunders and Sara Haslam, (Brill, 2015).
  • ‘Only Plenitude at the Void’, on Christian Wiman’s every riven thing, published in Agenda, September 2015, Vol. 49, Issue 2.
  • ‘Mud and Holy Water: A Question of Ends’ on Paul Muldoon, published July 2015 in (Routledge) POEM,  1, Issue 3.
  • ‘G.K. Chesterton’s London: Traversing Therapeutic Space’, published in December 2015, Vol. 41, Issue 3/4 of The Chesterton Review.
  • ‘Humanism After Humanism: Henry Miller: Colossus Upon Colossus’, published in February 2016 in Nexus 11 (The Journal of the International Henry Miller Society).
  • ‘From Bourbon to Scotch: Extracts From a Dubai Diary’ published in October 2015 in (Routledge) POEM, Vol. 3, Issue 2.
  • ‘The Authority of the Soul, and The Sole Authority: Comparing Two Catholic Memoirs: The Romantic Approach / The Classical’ – on Hilaire Belloc and Ronald A. Knox, published in early 2017, in Vol. 14, Issue 1, (Routledge) Life Writing.  Published online in winter 2015.
  • ‘Fathering Sons, Or, Re-Hearsing His Race: On Don Paterson’.  Published in March 2016, (Routledge) POEM, Vol. 4, Issue 1.
  • ‘I, Augustine’, opening 5,000 words of a potential book-length historical fiction, accepted after peer review, and published in June 2016 (online), later in print, in (Routledge) New Writing, Vol. 13, Issue 3.
  • Essay on Don Share’s ed. The Poems of Basil Bunting, published in The Wolf, Issue 34, Winter 2016.
  • ‘Facets of Exhaustion: The Mystic Antagonism of T.S. Eliot’s Music’, published in Agenda,January 2018, Vol. 51, Issue 3-4: a special Double Issue, commemorating a T.S. Eliot Centenary.
  • ‘Water in the Desert,’ reflective article on humanistic endeavour in today’s world, published in (Routledge) POEM, February 2017, Vol. 5, Issue 1.
  • My Short Story ‘Dye’ won the Cinnamon 2016 annual short fiction competition, and appeared at the head of an anthology, Ruins and Other Stories, Adam Craig, published in Spring 2017, Cinnamon Press.
  • ‘F(r)ictions from the Critical Imaginary: The Singular Case of George Steiner’, (Routledge) Prose Studies, published in May 2017, Vol. 39, Issue 1.
  • My short fiction, ‘Bad Faith’ came 2ndin the 2017 annual Cinnamon Press Short Story competition, and was published in the first Cinnamon Review of Short Fiction, ed. Adam Craig, in June 2018, Cinnamon Press.
  • ‘In Shy Darkness They Lie: Teaching Poems in Dubai’, published in February 2018, in (Routledge) POEM,  6, Issue 1.
  • ‘Animating Places: Reading Fiona Sampson’s Limestone CountryBeneath A Durrellian Lens’, published in (Routledge) Prose Studies  6 Issue 1.
  • ‘History Free Indirect: Reading Creative Techniques in Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria.’  Published in (EUP) Victoriographies, Issue 9.1, March 2019.
  • ‘The Ivory Tower’, a short fiction accepted for an anthology, Citizens of Nowhere, Rowan B. Fortune, to be published in 2019 with Rowan Tree Editing & Cinnamon Press.

ORCID 

instagram TikTok facebook twitter youtube