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Honors and Awards

Sheikh Zayed Book Award's Recent Winner

NYU Abu Dhabi Professor Philip Kennedy wins the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the 'Arab Culture in Other Languages' category

Press Release

NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and Comparative Literature Philip Kennedy has been announced as the winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award’s ‘Arab Culture in Other Languages’ category for his book Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Now in its 13th edition, the annual Sheikh Zayed Book Award is presented to outstanding writers, intellectuals, and publishers, as well as emerging talents whose writing and translation in the humanities field enriches Arab intellectual, cultural, literary, and social life.

Originally from the UK, Kennedy is the author of The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition (1997), Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition (2016), and a number of other studies about Arabic Literature. He is also the Vice Provost for public programming at the NYUAD Institute and the General Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.

 

“Having spent a good few years working on this book, I'm thrilled it has managed to capture some attention, rather than sitting silently on the research library bookshelf. We all want the work we have invested time in to make some difference in the perception of a subject, however small, and I'm delighted my own particular obsession with medieval Arabic literature has been deemed worth sharing with the wider world this spring. This is not something I take for granted, at all. Needless to say, I feel honored, humbled, grateful, and proud, especially to be associated through this award with Sheikh Zayed, whose formidable qualities and unique achievements I have always admired, ever since I first visited the UAE as a student in 1982.”

NYU Abu Dhabi Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and Comparative Literature Philip Kennedy

More about Kennedy

About NYU Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective undergraduate curriculum across the disciplines with a world center for advanced research and scholarship. The university enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high-achieving students have come from over 115 countries and speak over 115 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents.

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