Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
- Mississauga (UTM)
Cross-Appointments
Fields of Study
- Arabic Studies
- Islamic Studies
Areas of Interest
- Arabic-Islamic Intellectual History
- Arabic Critical Theory
- Ottoman and Mediterranean History
- Colonial and post-colonial Cities
- Orientalism and Occidentalism
(Professor Hanssen is on leave until the end of August 2026. During this time he serves as the director of the Orient Institute Beirut, Lebanon. The OIB is one of eleven German humanities centres abroad under the umbrella of the Max Weber Foundation. During this time he will not take on any new graduate students but welcomes colleagues and U of T students engaged in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies to consider visiting his institute, applying for grants and fellowships and developing research partnerships. )
Biography
Jens Hanssen is Professor of Arab Civilization, modern Middle Eastern Studies and Mediterranean History. Jens’s overall research explores the cultural entanglements between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East since the 19th century which led to explorations of ‘German theory’ in contemporary Arabic thought as well as the afterlives of Abasid and Andalusian philosophy in German, Jewish and Arabic intellectual debates. He is also interested in the connections between intellectual trends and urban culture, the rationalities of Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces, and translation and travelling theory. His writings have appeared in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Critical Inquiry, Arab Studies Journal, and the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
Education
Awards
- 2018 German and Jewish Echoes in 20th Century Arab Thought SSHRC Insight Grant
Publications
- Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History (Oxford University Press, Oxford : 2020)
- Crisis and Critique: The Transformation of the Arab Radical Tradition, 1960s-1980s (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh : 2020)
- The Clarion for Syria: A Patriot’s Call against the Civil War of 1860 (University of California Press : 2019)
- Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge : 2019)
- Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge : 2018)
- Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward an Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Left (Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Washington : 2016)
- History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut; The Quarter of Zokak el-Blat (German Orient Institute, Beirut : 2016)
- Kafka and Arabs (University of Chicago Press, Chicago : 2012)
- Malhamé – Malfamé: Levantine Elites and Trans-imperial Networks in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge : 2011)
- History, Heritage and Modernity: Cities in the Muslim World between Destruction and Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge : 2010)
- Fin de Siècle Beirut; the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford Historical Monograph Series, Clarendon Press, Oxford : 2005)
- The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the late Ottoman Empire (German Orient Institute, Beirut : 2002)