Ihab Hassan

From an Interview with
Ihab Hassan

Postmodernism, Etc.:*

by Frank L. Cioffi
Princeton University

After a brief period teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hassan moved to Wesleyan University, where he taught from 1954-1970. Since 1970, he has been the Vilas Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During his professional career, he has also held visiting professorships in Sweden, Japan, Germany, France, and Austria - as well as at Yale, Trinity College, and the University of Washington.

Over the last forty years, Hassan has won numerous awards and fellowships, including Guggenheim Foundation fellowships; Senior Fulbright lectureships; National Endowment for the Humanities grants; research appointments in France, England, Italy, Japan, Australia, and Ireland; and teaching awards. He was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Uppsala (1996) and the University of Giessen (1999). Currently he is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Association of University Professors of English.

Ihab Hassan’s bibliography is long, including some fifteen books and 200-odd articles. Among his critical works are Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (1961), The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett (1967), The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971), Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Times (1975), The Right Promethean Fire: Imagination, Science, and Cultural Change (1980), and The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (1987). In more recent years, some of Hassan’s work has moved toward autobiography, some toward travel writing: Out of Egypt: Fragments of an Autobiography appeared in 1986, Selves at Risk: Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letters in 1990, and Between the Eagle and the Sun: Traces of Japan in 1996. His Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades collects portions of earlier works. Hassan continues actively publishing in academic journals, and some of these articles will be alluded to in the interview that follows. The last lustrum has witnessed his publication of “Criticism in Our Clime: Parables of American Academe,” “Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy contra Politics,” “The Expense of Spirit in Postmodern Times: Between Nihilism and Belief,” contributions to a PMLA “Forum on Intellectuals” and “Millennial Issue,” “From Postmodernism to Postmodernity,” “Queries for Postcolonial Studies,” “Globalism and Its Discontents” in Profession 1999, “How Australian Is It?,” included in Best Australian Essays 2000.

Hassan’s writings have been translated into sixteen different languages.

*Used with permission from Style 33, 1 (Fall 1999)