University of Central Florida Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures Haidar Khezri has been selected for the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, which will support his research at the University of Tübingen in Germany for 12 months and help him complete his forthcoming manuscript, Minor Transnationalism: Reading Franz Kafka in the Middle East.
The fellowship recognizes Khezri’s scholarly achievements and provides an opportunity to advance an interdisciplinary project examining Franz Kafka’s literature through the intellectual, cultural and historical perspectives of Europe and the Middle East. Established in 1953 by the Federal Republic of Germany, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation supports international academic exchange by bringing distinguished researchers from around the world to Germany for research and collaboration.
“I am humbled and deeply honored to receive the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship,” Khezri said. “The fellowship provides an extraordinary opportunity to develop my research in conversation with leading scholars in Germany, the Czech Republic and Europe and to complete my decade-long project: Minor Transnationalism: Reading Franz Kafka in the Middle East.”
Khezri’s manuscript explores how Kafka’s writings have been read, interpreted and reimagined since World War II, during the Cold War and within contemporary Middle Eastern intellectual and cultural contexts. Rather than considering Kafka solely as a European literary figure, the project examines how his work can open conversations about free speech and authoritarianism, identity, war and displacement, modernity, political power, alienation and belonging across different cultural and historical settings.
The project reflects Khezri’s broader scholarly interest in how ideas move across linguistic, cultural and geographic boundaries. By placing Kafka in dialogue with Middle Eastern intellectual traditions and experiences, his research seeks to expand understanding of Kafka’s global significance and the ways literature is transformed as it moves across cultures.
During his fellowship, Khezri will conduct research at the University of Tübingen, where he will work with scholars in literary and cultural studies and draw on resources related to German and European intellectual traditions. The fellowship will also provide opportunities to develop academic collaborations with scholars in Germany, the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe.
“I see this fellowship as an opportunity not only to complete my book, but also to build intellectual bridges,” Khezri said. “Kafka’s work has traveled across languages and cultures in remarkable ways. Studying those encounters can tell us much about how literature is transformed when it enters new intellectual and cultural worlds.”
Peter Larson, associate dean for research in the UCF College of Arts and Humanities, says Khezri’s fellowship is highly prestigious. “Khezri joins an elite group of lifelong ‘Humboldtians ‘. His scholarship exemplifies the kind of internationally engaged and interdisciplinary research that defines humanities at their best.”
At UCF, Khezri’s scholarship connects literary and cultural studies with questions that cross geographic and disciplinary boundaries. His work reflects the university’s commitment to international and interdisciplinary research in the humanities.