Suzanne P I N C K N E Y Stetkevych
A specialist in Classical Arabic Poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College (1972) and a PhD in Classical Arabic Literature from The University of Chicago (1981). She taught Arabic literature for many years (1986-2013) at Indiana University, Bloomington, before her appointment as Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University (2014-retired 2024). She serves as Executive Editor of Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures.
Her publications, in English and in Arabic, are primarily concerned with the ritual, performance and performative underpinnings of the structure and function of classical Arabic poetry in its literary-historical setting. She engages ritual theory, rite of passage, gift exchange and sacrificial rituals; the socio-economic role of the qasida; the ceremonial aspects of qasida performance as a courtly negotiation of status and legitimacy; the spiritually and politically transformative role of madih nabawi (praise poems to the Prophet Mohammad). Among her books are: Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the Abbasid Age (E.J. Brill 1991); the Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Cornell UP 1993; pbk 2011); The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Indiana UP 2002); The Mantle Odes: Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabic Tradition (Indiana UP 2010), and The Cooing of the Dove and the Cawing of the Crow: Late 'Abbasid Poetics in Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri's Saqt al-Zand and Luzum Ma La Yalzam (E.J. Brill, 2022; Open Access).
She has been awarded the Middle East Medievalists' Lifetime Achievement Award (USA 2017); co-winner (with the late Jaroslav Stetkevych) of the Shiekh Zayed Personality of the Year Award in Arabic Literature (UAE 2019); The King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature (Saudi Arabia, 2022); and the Georgetown University Career Research Achievement Award (2023).
She is currently working on a second book of key poems in the madih nabawi (praise poems to the Prophet) tradition and a study on the origins of pre-Islamic poetry.
Address: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Her publications, in English and in Arabic, are primarily concerned with the ritual, performance and performative underpinnings of the structure and function of classical Arabic poetry in its literary-historical setting. She engages ritual theory, rite of passage, gift exchange and sacrificial rituals; the socio-economic role of the qasida; the ceremonial aspects of qasida performance as a courtly negotiation of status and legitimacy; the spiritually and politically transformative role of madih nabawi (praise poems to the Prophet Mohammad). Among her books are: Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the Abbasid Age (E.J. Brill 1991); the Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Cornell UP 1993; pbk 2011); The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Indiana UP 2002); The Mantle Odes: Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabic Tradition (Indiana UP 2010), and The Cooing of the Dove and the Cawing of the Crow: Late 'Abbasid Poetics in Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri's Saqt al-Zand and Luzum Ma La Yalzam (E.J. Brill, 2022; Open Access).
She has been awarded the Middle East Medievalists' Lifetime Achievement Award (USA 2017); co-winner (with the late Jaroslav Stetkevych) of the Shiekh Zayed Personality of the Year Award in Arabic Literature (UAE 2019); The King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature (Saudi Arabia, 2022); and the Georgetown University Career Research Achievement Award (2023).
She is currently working on a second book of key poems in the madih nabawi (praise poems to the Prophet) tradition and a study on the origins of pre-Islamic poetry.
Address: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
less
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Papers by Suzanne P I N C K N E Y Stetkevych
The crucial literary historical position of this poem, in terms of subject matter, is noted by the Egyptian literary scholar Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī (d. 2013) in a brief biographical and bibliographical notice in his 1991 al-Madāʾiḥ al-nabawiyyah: “Perhaps one of the first qaṣīdahs of madīḥ written exclusively to praise the Prophet (pbuh) during the Fāṭimid period, without the madīḥ being subordinate to the enumeration of the virtues of Āl al-Bayt, is the qaṣīdah known as ash-Shaqrāṭīsiyyah, after its author […]”.