Professor Dr. Baker Bani Khair from the Faculty of Arts, Department of English at the Hashemite University participated in the conference Towards a Poetics of Arab Diasporic Literary and Cultural Studies , which took place at the British Research Council in Bilad al-Sham, Jabal Luweibdeh-Amman, over Saturday and Sunday, 22-23/11. Dr. Bani Khair presented a scholarly research paper titled Gothicism in Diasporic Literature:A Freudian Study of Gibran Khalil Gibran’s The Pastor and the Satan
In his research paper, he discussed the gothic and horror elements employed by Gibran Khalil Gibran in his narrative The Pastor and the Satan, which appeared in his collection of short stories and poetry in the book The Storms, translated by Professor John Walbridge in 1993.
Dr. Bani Khair clarified in a contemporary critical reading the gothic elements used by Gibran in his story in a spontaneous way that incites fear of the unknown amid an atmosphere of mystery and wonder in a meeting between man and the devil. Professor Bani Khair used in his analysis Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind as well as the uncanny (Unheimlich) to connect Gibran Khalil Gibran's philosophy to the meaning of the essence of life and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.
