Magdi Youssef (born 22 July 1936 ) is an Egyptian professor of comparative literature and culture studies. He has taught at various universities in Europe and Egypt until his retirement. Al-Ahram (according to the Middle East Institute the equivalent of the New York Times in the Arab World) called Youssef “the renowned culture critic.” He is widely noted in the Arab world for his analytic interventions that focus on cultural alienation and unequal exchange in the sphere of culture. His book Critical Battles received wide attention. Youssef has contributed to the proceedings of comparative literature congresses in Latin America, Asia, Europe and the US., and to such journals as Al-Hilal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press) and Theatre Research International (Oxford Univ. Press). He is also the founding president of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS) and still actively involved in theoretical debates related to intercultural relations and comparative literature.
Youssef is a member of the Association pour l'avancement des études islamiques, Collège de France (Paris). He is also listed as a member of the International Sociological Association (ISA), L'Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Francaise, the International Brecht Society, based in the US, the Egyptian Association of Plastic Art Critics and the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA). Magdi Youssef adheres to the Egyptian writers' union and the German Schriftstellerverband.
Outside academe, Youssef was widely noted as a critic of contemporary developments and a culture critic by such daily newspapers and weeklies as The Irish Times, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al Qahira, Al-Ahram Daily, Al-Ahram Hebdo, Al-Ahram Weekly, as well as other media in the Arab World, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, and the US.
Early life and education
Magdi Youssef is a native of Cairo. After completing his social scientific studies at Ain Shams University in Cairo and pursuing advanced studies in Germany, he acquired in October 1975 the degree of Dr. rer. soc. from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Bochum University (recognized by the Supreme Council of Universities of Egypt as the equivalent of a Ph.D.). From 1963 till 1971, he collaborated with the German ‘orientalist’ Annemarie Schimmel, translating literary and philosophical texts and contributing to the periodical Fikrun wa Fann (Thought and Art) He has two children.
Academic career
Youssef taught at German universities since 1965. After intensive debates with conventional Orientalists, he established and taught the hitherto contested subject of Modern and Contemporary Arabic Literature and Culture at Cologne University. Modern and Contemporary Arabic Literature had been widely ignored in German academe (which specialized in Classical Arabic and the Islamic Legacy). Youssef continued to teach this subject at Cologne University until 1971.
From October 1971–76, Youssef taught Modern Arabic Literature and Culture at the Department of Philology at Bochum University. Since then he has lectured on the Interactions between the Arab and Western Socio-Cultural Formations in Modern Times, at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Bochum University, at post-graduate level.
From 1979 to 1981, Youssef continued to commute between Bochum and Tanta, teaching Methodology of Research at the department of sociology and the department of philosophy at Tanta University (Egypt). He was Professor of Methodology of Research at the Academy of Arts in Cairo from 1983 to 1984. Until his retirement, Magdi Youssef was Professor of Comparative Literature and Drama Studies at the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University (from the mid-1980s-2005). From 1988 to 1991 he was simultaneously a visiting professor of Methodology of Research at the Faculty of Mass Communication at the same university. Youssef has also been a visiting professor at Trinity College Dublin. And he taught at Bonn University in the context of Gastprofessur. More recently, he has been offered a research fellowship at the Free University of Berlin (in 2014 and 2015).