Professor of comparative literature and drama at Cairo University and president of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS), based in Germany at Bremen University and associated with UN's ECOSCOC.
Since 1965, Magdi Youssef has taught at various universities in Europe and the Arab world. He specializes in the comparative study of literature and socio-cultures. He is a founder and the president of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS), an association that counted the late Pierre Bourdieu and the late Darcy Ribeiro among its officers.
He has published works in six European languages, apart from Arabic, and he is also a renowned translator of Arab and German poetry and prose as well as a contributor to publications as diverse as Al-Hilal, Al Ahram, the International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press) and Theatre Research International (Oxford Univ. Press). He was a member of the jury of the Carthago International Theatre Festival in 1995, and has joined both the Egyptian and the German Writers Unions, as well as numerous scholarly associations, such as the Association pour l'avancement des Études Islamiques, College de France (Paris), the International Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures, the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), the International Sociological Association (ISA), the International Brecht Society (IBS; based in the US), the Egyptian Philosophical Association, etc. As a well-known and respected art critic, he is a member of the Egyptian Association of Plastic Arts Critics.
He is also an adviser to the editorial board of various renowned publications, including the monthly literary and cultural review, Sotour (Cairo - London), and the Yearbook of Comparative Literature (Cairo University).
Magdi Youssef is listed in the Egyptian Who is Who, the Who is Who in the Middle East, and the International Who is Who in Asian Studies (H.K.), etc.
Among his recent publications are:
Questions of Critical Methodology ( in Arabic : أسئلة المنهج الناقد ( فى مختلف التخصصات ) , Yastoron Publishing: Cairo, 2016, 378 pages.
Decolonizing World Literature, in: D'haen, Theo et al: Major versus Minor? – Languages and Literatures in a Globalized World, John Benjamins Publishing: Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2015, pp.125-140.
Brecht's Theatre and Social Change in Egypt ( 1954-71), republished in: www.arabstages.org (first issue), Dec. 2014.
France's Theatre d'al-Asifa: An arab-based alternative theatre model, in: www.arabstages.org (second issue), 2015.
Il mito della 'letteratura europea', in: Sinopoli, Franca (a cura), La letteratura europea vista dagli altri, Meltemi editore: Roma, 2003, pp.67-105.
From a Philological to a Social Scientific Approach with Regard to Comparative Literary Research, in: Coutinho, Eduardo (ed): Beyond Binarisms, Selected papers from the 18th congress of the International Comparative Literature Association ( ICLA) held in Brazil in 2007, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, pp. 14-19 (big size pages).
Towards A Real Democratisation of the Literary Canon: The Euro-Arab Context as A Paradigm (forthcoming)
Refutations: Critique of Main Streams of Arab Thought Today, Cairo (State Publishing House of Egypt) 2002
From Socio-Cultural Interference to Cross-Cultural Interaction, Cairo (Al Hilal Monthly Book Series) 2001
The Myth of European Literature, Aachen and Rotterdam (Symposium Press) 1998
Socio-Cultural Interference and Intellectual Independence, Cairo (The State Publishing House of Egypt) 1993
Contemporary Arabic Literature and World Literature: A Methodological Preposition, in:Intercultural Studies (scholarly organ of the International Association of Intercultural Studies -IAIS)
