Departing from the debates over world literature that have guided comparative literary studies for over a decade, this two-day workshop explores the alternative poetic geographies that traverse the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf. Participants will share original research on circuits of exchange and translation that cut transversally from Rabat to Baghdad, Beirut to Algiers, Tehran to Cairo, and beyond to Latin America and South Asia. As Europe recedes into the background as a site of literary circulation and theoretical production, we will investigate how a multilingual, transregional approach centered on the Middle East places new and productive pressures on established paradigms in postcolonial theory and world literature.