Eric Calderwood

Wellesley High School Author: Eric Calderwood (1998)

             A stellar student at WHS, Eric Calderwood is Associate Professor of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the author of the award-winning Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture. He is a contributor to NPR, the BBC, and Foreign Policy. His new book On Earth or in Poems, due out in 2023, traces the role of al-Andalus in music and in debates about Arab and Berber identities, Arab and Muslim feminisms, the politics of Palestine and Israel, and immigration and multiculturalism in Europe. The Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish once asked, “Was al-Andalus / Here or there? On earth … or in poems?” The artists and activists showcased in this book answer: it was there, it is here, and it will be.