In May 2014, Glen Kalem-Habib was invited by the Lebanese American University in Beirut to present a lecture drawn from sixteen years of field research into the global readership of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet — a body of work as surprising as it is vast.
By Glen Kalem-Habib · Kahlil Gibran Collective · 22 May 2014
Glen Kalem-Habib presenting at the Lebanese American University, Beirut, 14–15 May 2014.
What do Elvis Presley, the richest man in the world, and the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay all have in common? They have all read — and been moved by — the work of Kahlil Gibran.
On the 14th and 15th of May 2014, by invitation of the Lebanese American University of Beirut and sponsored by the Departments of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Communication Arts, Glen Kalem-Habib presented a lecture to faculty and students drawing on sixteen years of research into what he calls the "Global Gibran and His Readership." The focus was not on the familiar metrics — print runs, translations, and editions — but on the far more revealing question of who has actually read The Prophet: which individuals, in which circumstances, and to what effect.
The answer, as the research demonstrates, is one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of modern literature. The Prophet has found its way into the hands of heads of state and prisoners of conscience, rock stars and philosophers, soldiers and spiritual leaders. It has been carried into war zones and read at deathbeds, pressed into the hands of the grieving and the newly married alike. No other book of the twentieth century — with the possible exception of the Bible — has been given as a gift so many times, in so many languages, across so many cultures.
Glen Kalem-Habib's research and study, conducted alongside Gibran scholars and academics from around the world, was published in the volume The Enduring Legacy of Kahlil Gibran, an initiative of the George and Lisa Zakhem Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Glen Kalem-Habib at the Lebanese American University, Beirut, 15 May 2014.
Glen Kalem-Habib is an international Kahlil Gibran researcher, historian, and filmmaker based in Sydney, Australia. Over more than two decades of field research, he has pursued Gibran's story across four continents — through archives, museums, private collections, and the living communities that continue to read, translate, and celebrate his work. He describes himself as "a street scholar": someone who works not only in the library but in the field, building the kind of knowledge that only comes from being present in the places where history happened.
His years of research formed the foundation of the feature-length documentary film Kahlil Gibran: The Reluctant Visionary. He is a founding member of the Kahlil Gibran Collective and an active fellow of the International Association for the Study of the Life and Works of Kahlil Gibran, founded by the George and Lisa Zakhem Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland.
Glen is available for talks, presentations, and guided tours of Kahlil Gibran museums and heritage sites. To enquire, contact hello@kahlilgibran.com.
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