Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025, discusses his book ‘Food and Language: Rhetorical-Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan. Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025 for Literary and Art Criticism, discusses his book ‘الطعام والكلام: حفريات بلاغية ثقافية في التراث العربي’ / ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College. Introduced by Professor Michael Willis, HM King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies.

About the book:

Published in 2023, this work offers a critique of the complex relation between rhetoric and food in Arab heritage, analysing literary texts from poetry to proverbs and stories from a broad cultural perspective. With its in-depth analysis and broad scope, his research enriches rhetorical studies with new, unconventional approaches.

About the author:

Said Laouadi is a Moroccan academic and professor of rhetoric and discourse analysis at the Faculty of Arabic Language at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Scientific Research and International Cooperation and heads the Laboratory for Methodological Integration in Discourse Analysis. Laouadi oversees the ‘Academic Picks’ programme, which hosts leading Arab researchers in critical and linguistic studies. Laouadi serves as a member of judging panels for several Arab and Moroccan literary awards, while also contributing to various specialised academic journals as an editor and reviewer. His research explores the intersection of rhetoric and culture, with notable publications such as ‘The Kitchen of the Novel: Food in Fiction from Visuality to Weaving’ (2024) and ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), along with studies on literature, imagery, and aesthetics in poetic discourse”.