Shawkat Toorawa: The Qur'an as Literature, Translating the Qur'an, and Assessing Qur'anic Beauty

In this interview I discuss many topics in Qur'anic Studies with Dr. Shawkat Toorawa. We touch on everything from how the Qur'an can be understood as literature to the principles of translating the Qur'an and how to understand the "beauty of the Qur'an" from a scholarly perspective.
Dr. Shawkat M. Toorawa obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is the chair of NELC at Yale University. His scholarly interests include: classical and medieval Arabic literature, especially the literary and writerly culture of Abbasid Baghdad; the Qur’an, in particular hapaxes, rhyme-words, and translation; the Waqwaq Tree and islands; Indian Ocean studies, particularly Creole literatures of Mauritius and the Mascarenes; modern poetry; translation; and SF film and literature.
His books include a study co-authored with the academic alliance RRAALL on autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition; a study of the ninth-century Baghdad bookman Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur; a critical edition and translation of a collection of long poems by the Syro-Lebanese poet, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber); a reference work on Arabic literary culture from the 6th-10th centuries AD, co-edited with Michael Cooperson; an edited collection of essays on the islands and islanders of the western Indian Ocean; an edited anthology of poetry about New York City; and a critical edition and collaborative translation with the editors of the Library of Arabic Literature of a 12th century work by the historian Ibn al-Sa’i, Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the court of Baghdad. His current projects include a book of translations of selected surahs and passages from the Qur’an and an edited collection on the literary dimensions of the Qur’an.
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