Google is such a strange thing: You can find out about Allen’s 2010 summer seminar through a letter to his colleagues. Allen has been in the Arab-lit field since the 1960s, has translated numerous works, and has written The Arabic Novel and The Arabic Literary Heritage.
This is particularly interesting for literature professors, I think, as relatively few teach any Arabic literature in English.
Hmm.
His choice of Mahfouz is unexpected, although even more unexpected is his rendering of Naguib as Najib. Say what you like about classical Arabic prose, but the man was Egyptian and his name was Naguib or Nagib or Nageeb, hard g.