Hassan, Ihab Habib, 1925-....

Ihab Hassan is a prominent literary critic, scholar, and theorist best known for his work on postmodernism.

He was born in Cairo, Egypt on October 17, 1925. He studied electical engineering at the University of Cairo and came to the United States in 1946, where he has remained ever since, to pursue graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Shortly after receiving his MS in 1948, Hassan concentrated on literary studies and received his Ph. D. from Penn in 1953. Following academic positions at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Wesleyan University, Hassan joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1970 as the Vilas Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature, a position he continues to hold as of 2002.

Historical Background

Ihab Habib Hassan is a prominent critic, scholar, and theorist in the academic study of literature. While focusing his scholarship on the post-war novel, he was among the first to articulate a concept of the postmodern. He was born in Cairo, Egypt on October 17, 1925. The son of a civil servant, he spent his youth in Egypt and eventually attended the University of Cairo to study electrical engineering. Upon graduation in 1946, he received the prestigious Egyptian Educational Mission fellowship and left for the United States to continue his studies in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Hassan has lived in the United States ever since.

Hassan completed his Master of Science degree in 1948, but soon decided to abandon engineering for an academic career in literature. He began a doctoral program in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his Master's degree in 1950 and his doctorate in 1953. Hassan began his professional career in 1952 as an instructor of English at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. In 1954 he obtained a position at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He was later named the Benjamin L. Waite Professor of English and served as the director of both the College of Letters and the Center for Humanities. In 1970 he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee as the Vilas Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, a position he continues to hold as of 2002.

During his time at Wesleyan, Hassan published work on contemporary and avant-garde literature, and he has continued to focus on these themes throughout his career. The major publications from his early period are Radical Innocence and The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller & Samuel Beckett . In these works, he attempts to describe the characteristics that distinguish post-war fiction from the literature of high modernism. Hassan continued to pursue the same theme in his Dismemberment of Orpheus, in which he introduced the term "postmodern." Along with Jean-François Lyotard, Hassan was one of the first scholars to articulate a conception of the postmodern, and he has devoted a large portion of his academic career to this. In his best-known works, he describes formal characteristics of the postmodern, such as discontinuity, indeterminacy, and irony. During this period, he also espoused a concept of the "critic as innovator." His major statements in these regards have been Dismemberment of Orpheus, Paracriticisms, and The Right Promethean Fire .

Although Hassan has always been engaged in dialogue with the major trends of literary theory, he cannot be easily classified as belonging to any specific school of literary criticism. During the 1980s, beginning with the publication of his autobiography Out of Egypt, Hassan began to move away from articulating the formal characteristics of postmodernism. In particular, his book Selves at Risk examines themes of quest in contemporary literature, and Between the Eagle and the Sun focuses on cultural exchange between Japan and the United States. Hassan continues to provide insightful commentary on the late twentieth century. As of 2007, he lives and works in Milwaukee.