Faculty Profiles: Stefan Vander Elst

Professor Stefan Vander Elst

Intermingling between East and West fascinates Assistant Professor Stefan Vander Elst of the English Department to such an extent that a part of him would have preferred to live in the Middle Ages rather than in current times.

"The Middle Ages is one of the only periods when East and West truly intermingled, for we had the Crusades, or the Christian kingdom in the Arab world, and the Muslim kingdom or the Moors in Spain," he says. "Whereas now, Western culture has come to dominate most of the world and there is no more fusion left."

Perhaps that is why Vander Elst, who was living in the United States, chose to move to Lebanon despite its turmoil to witness up close this interweaving between the two cultures in the daily lives of Beirutis.

Vander Elst, who is a Belgian and specializes in medieval English literature and particularly in Chaucer, finds there is a lot to learn from the period of "the Dark Ages," which he considers to contain a rich web of cross-cultural interaction. "I want to show my students the sophistication and humor that I find in Chaucer," he comments.

Meanwhile, he has learned much from the Lebanese since he moved here. "I have developed a huge amount of respect for Arabic culture in a very short time….for instance, one can have an evening of excellent entertainment in Beirut without feeling compelled to "touch the booze," (as he put it).

Indeed, Vander Elst believes the Arab world has a lot to offer, but has to work on improving the negative image people have of it. Nevertheless, the bad reputation the region and country suffer from were not enough to deter the young professor from coming to Lebanon. He says AUB's excellent reputation and the warmth characterizing all the Middle Easterners he had met in the United States were enough to convince him to make the move.

"AUB is an excellent university, populated by the brightest students I have ever met," he declared. "And it's such a blessing to leave my apartment in the morning and look out at the blue Mediterranean."