ناتالي ارنولد
استاذ مشارك
- Email: Nathalie.Arnold@zu.ac.ae
- Telephone: +97144021320
- Address: Abu Dhabi - Khalifa City, AUH : MF 1 1 018 / DXB : C-L1-013
Introduction
I am a socio-cultural anthropologist, translator of Swahili literature, and novelist. I was born in Belgium, and grew up in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Belgium, and South Africa. After obtaining a B.A. in African Studies from Bryn Mawr College in 1991, I acquired an MA and PhD in anthropology, and an MFA in creative writing, from Indiana University (2003). As an anthropologist, I focus on the historical and mystical imaginations, social geography, and daily life in Pemba, Zanzibar. My work in literary translation seeks to bring into English works whose language and orientation challenge Western notions of geography and power. My own fiction writing (published as N.S. Koenings) explores questions of identity, race, language, and gender in East Africa. I grew up speaking French and Swahili, and continue to study other languages, including Arabic and German.
Roles and Responsibilities
Current: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Associate Professor of Anthropology Fellow, Academy for Advanced African Studies at Bayreuth University (Bavaria, Germany) (October-December 2019)
Asociate Professor of Interdsiciplinary Arts and Swahili Studies, Hampshire College (USA)
(2004-2019)
Memberships
American Anthropological Association
African Studies Association
Islam in Africa Study Group
British Africa Society
African Literature Association
CHAUKIDU – Association for the Global Promotion of the Swahili Language.
Research and Professional Activities
My early research has focused on the historical imagination and people’s relationships to the invisible world in Pemba, Zanzibar. I am currently at the very beginning of a new project about social geography, memory, and the material world.
Research interests: Social geography, historical and mystical imagination, landscapes, environment, story-telling, non-human agents in ethnography, language, popular discourse, translation and literature. Regions: East Africa, Indian Ocean.
Current Projects:
In anthropology, I am currently completing a book manuscript that draws on over 20 years’ of ethnographic research about the invisible world in Pemba, Zanzibar, and its importance to local conceptions of community, power, and history. I am in the early stages of envisaging a project about memory, landscapes, and the material world, focused on several of Pemba’s oldest and largest villages.
In translation, I have recently completed a translation from Swahili of Emmanuel Mbogo’s 1996 novel ‘Vipuli vya Figo.’ The translation is under consideration. I am currently working with the Commonwealth Writers organization to edit a collection of texts translated from Swahili into English.
Keywords:
Anthropology, Swahili, Africa, literature, translation.
Teaching Areas
Undergraduate
Popular Cultures
Critical Thinking
Arnold Koenings, Nathalie. 2019 ‘Ikiwa Kuna Shibe, Maziwa Hayauzwi: food discourse as 20th century history in Pemba, Zanzibar.’ Swahili Forum, 24: 16-36.
Arnold Koenings, Nathalie. 2019. ‘Eating the Country and a Question of Aluminum Foil: emerging issues in literary translation from and into Swahili.’ Swahili Forum, 25: 75-93.
Arnold Koenings, Nathalie. 2018. ‘For Us It’s What Came After: Locating Pemba in the Zanzibar Revolution.’ In Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle: Revolution in Zanzibar. Eds. William Bissell and Marie-Aude Fouère. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota.
Arnold Koenings, Nathalie. 2018 . ‘Far from Home.’ Two chapters from Adam Shafi’s Mbali na Nyumbani (EAEP: Nairobi, 2013). Asymptote. https://www.asymptotejournal.com/fiction/far-from-home/swahili/.
Koenings, N.S. 2018. ‘I’ll Sleep in a River if You Don’t Want my Hand.’ Enkare Review 2. Nairobi.