EDWARD SAID | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Mar 17, 2026 6:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Mar 17, 2026 6:00 pm
450K
Join us explore the political thought of the foremost advocate for the Palestinian cause in the West
"A learned and intimate exploration of Said's thought with deep relevance for today's debates about Palestine and Israel and American intellectual life." – Peter Beinart, author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete's temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. Said's subsequent writings, which cast light on the interplay between cultural representation and the exercise of Western political power, caused a seismic shift in scholarly circles and beyond. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said's political thought.
Nubar Hovsepian is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Nader Hashemi, Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at Georgetown University. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Hovsepian will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of EDWARD SAID will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Nubar Hovsepian is associate professor emeritus of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is the author of Palestinian State Formation: Education and the Construction of National Identity, and he edited and contributed to The War on Lebanon. Hovsepian has devoted enormous time to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and served, from 1982 to 1984, as political affairs officer for the United Nations Conference on the Question of Palestine.
Dr. Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2017) and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies (Routledge, 2023). His next book project is entitled: “The Global Divide over Israel and Palestine.” He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
BOOK DETAILS
Edward Said
The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual
By Author Nubar Hovsepian, Forward by Rashid Khalidi
June 03, 2025 | Hardcover, 316 pages, $49.95
