Mapping Memory: Space and the Afterlives of Violence in Iraqi and American Fiction after 2003

Author

Khaled al-Hilli, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

2-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Comparative Literature

Advisor

Ammiel Alcalay

Committee Members

Siraj Ahmed

Christopher Stone

Subject Categories

American Literature | Arabic Language and Literature | Arabic Studies | Comparative Literature

Keywords

Iraqi novel, Arabic novel, Arabic literature, post-2003 novel, American war novel, MFA, War fiction, post-2003 Iraqi fiction

Abstract

This dissertation examines the literary afterlives of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq through a comparative analysis of Iraqi and American fiction, arguing that war is most powerfully inscribed not only through events or testimony but through narrative space as a medium of memory. Bringing Iraqi novels and American war narratives into sustained dialogue, the study explores how literature maps violence onto cities, neighborhoods, domestic interiors, battlefields, and transnational borders, transforming these sites into palimpsests where personal trauma, collective history, and imperial power converge.

The project is grounded in the premise that the post-2003 Iraqi and American narratives examined here emerge from radically asymmetrical historical, cultural, and institutional conditions, producing divergent narrative protocols of memory. Iraqi fiction—written from within Iraq and across the diaspora—registers war as an extension of everyday life, embedding violence within long histories of authoritarianism, sanctions, displacement, and occupation. Urban spaces such as Baghdad and Basra appear as layered archives of memory where the present is haunted by unresolved pasts. By contrast, much American war literature is shaped by the authority of soldierly testimony and the institutional circuits of the MFA, publishing, and critical reception apparatus. These narratives frequently render Iraqi space through the restricted optics of combat and trauma, foregrounding immediacy, disorientation, and the limits of representation while often marginalizing civilian perspectives.

Drawing on theories of cultural memory, empire, spatial narratology, and hauntology, the dissertation analyzes how war reshapes narrative temporality and spatial form. It treats novels as sites where memory is produced, managed, and contested, rather than as transparent records of experience. Through close readings of post-2003 Iraqi fiction, including works by Sinan Antoon, Ahmed Saadawi, Diaa Jubaili, and Muhsin al-Ramli, alongside American narratives by Kevin Powers, Matt Gallagher, Ben Fountain, Elliott Colla, and many others, the study demonstrates how literature functions simultaneously as archive, counter-archive, and critique of imperial memory.

By situating Iraqi and American texts within a shared yet uneven framework of empire and representation, this dissertation challenges nationally bounded approaches to war literature. It argues that only a comparative, transnational reading can account for the asymmetries of voice, visibility, and remembrance that continue to shape how the Iraq War is narrated, remembered, and forgotten.

Recommended Citation

al-Hilli, Khaled, "Mapping Memory: Space and the Afterlives of Violence in Iraqi and American Fiction after 2003" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6596