Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel


Book Description

Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women's experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women's writing.




Feminism and Avant-garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel


Book Description

"This book examines the literary aesthetics of existentialism, critical realism, and surrealism in contemporary feminist literature in the Levant. Focusing on the novels of Ghadah al-Samman, Sahar Khalifeh, and Huda Barakat, it critically dissects their representations of gender and sexuality during times of war and national crisis in the region"...




Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel


Book Description

Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women's experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women's writing.




Masculinity and Syrian Fiction


Book Description

What can novels tell us about masculinity in Syria? In this book, Lovisa Berg explores over 20 Syrian novels covering the last 50 years of the 20th century. Uniquely, she examines only female writers in order to gauge the changing ways in which Syrian women perceived the function of masculinity, and the impact certain attitudes towards masculinity have on men, women, children and Syrian society, from a female perspective. The works of writers from Kulit Khuri to Usayma Darwish are analysed to explore changing attitudes to gender in Syria and the Middle East, as well as the political upheavals within the country and region. We see the idealistically portrayed men in the novels of female authors in the 1950s give way in time to a more critical depictions of patriarchy. Above all, we see through the use of novels a plethora of critiques of masculine hegemony in Syrian society, the authors of which are able with the use of fiction to reorganise and question maleness in a way denied to them in reality. This book will be of interest to scholars of Contemporary Syrian and Arabic Literature, Masculinity Studies and Women's Studies.




Zakariyya Tamir and the Politics of the Syrian Short Story


Book Description

Zakariyya Tamir is Syria's foremost writer of short stories, and his works are widely read across the Arab world. In this, the first English language monograph on Tamir's entire oeuvre, Alessandro Columbu examines Tamir's literary development in the context of changing political contexts, from his beginnings as a short story writer on local magazines in the late 1950s until the Syrian revolution of 2011. Thus, the movements from independence and Western-inspired modernisation to the rise of nationalism and socialism; war, defeat, occupation in the 1960s; the emergence of authoritarianism and the cult of personality of Hafiz al-Assad in the 1970s are charted in the context of Tamir's works. Therein, the significance of masculinity and patriarchy and its changing nature in relation to nationalism and authoritarianism are revealed as Tamir's foremost vehicles for social and political critique. The role of female sexuality and its disrupting/empowering nature vis-à-vis patriarchal institutions is also explored, as is the question of literary commitment and the relationship between authors and the authoritarian regime of Syria; homosexuality and representations of unconventional sexualities in general.




Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom


Book Description

Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom offers researchers and teachers methods for instructing students on the diversity of the English language on a global scale. A complement to Devereaux and Palmer’s Teaching Language Variation in the Classroom, this collection provides real-world, classroom-tested strategies for teaching English language variation in a variety of contexts and countries, and with a variety of language learners. Each chapter balances theory with discussions of curriculum and lesson planning to address how to effectively teach in global classrooms with approaches based on English language variation. With lessons and examples from five continents, the volume covers recent debates on many pedagogical topics, including standardization, stereotyping, code-switching, translanguaging, translation, identity, ideology, empathy, and post-colonial and critical theoretical approaches. The array of pedagogical strategies, accessible linguistic research, clear methods, and resources provided makes it an essential volume for pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate students, and scholars in courses on TESOL, EFL, World/Global Englishes, English as a Medium of Instruction, and Applied Linguistics.




Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence and the Culture of Homoerotic Desire


Book Description

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire saw a crucial change in attitudes towards sexuality. Notions of 'respectability', 'propriety' and 'sexual morality' were being transformed in literary and cultural discourses, a shift that was related to the gradual rise in anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism. However, contemporary Orientalists such as Sir Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence were oblivious to certain aspects of this process of cultural reconfiguration. While accounts of male-love poetry (ghazal al-mudhakkar) were being gradually expurgated from the Arab literary heritage, elaborate narratives of Oriental homoerotic desire distinctively characterise the encounters of both Burton and Lawrence with the Arab East. By comparing their literary and autobiographical accounts of the Arab Orient with contemporary Arabic literature, Feras Alkabani is able to expose this critical disparity in cross-cultural portrayals of sexual morality and homoerotic desire. Alkabani relates the conflicting agendas of contemporary Orientalists and Arab scholars to the shifts in international imperial power relations and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire. His detailed comparative study reveals the significance of homoerotic desire within Orientalist and Arab literary discourses at a time when the meaning and connotations of poetic male-love were undergoing a critical change in Arab culture and literature. It will prove invaluable for those researching Orientalism, nationalism, imperialism and manifestations of homoerotic desire in the fin-de-siècle Middle East.




Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

A multi-disciplinary exploration of how masculinity in the MENA region is constructed in film, literature, and nationalist discourse Constructions of masculinity are constantly evolving and being resisted in the Middle East and North Africa. There is no "before" that was a stable gendered environment. This edited collection examines constructions of both hegemonic and marginalized masculinities in the MENA region, through literary criticism, film studies, discourse analysis, anthropological accounts, and studies of military culture. Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of linguistics, comparative literature, sociology, cultural studies, queer and gender studies, film studies, and history, Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa spans the colonial to the postcolonial eras with emphasis on the late twentieth century to the present day. This collective study is a diverse and exciting addition to the literature on gender and societal organization at a time when masculinities in the Middle East and North Africa are often essentialized and misunderstood. Contributors: Jedidiah Anderson, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, USA Amal Amireh, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA Kaveh Bassiri, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA Oyman Basran, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA Alessandro Columbu, University of Manchester, England Nicole Fares, independent scholar Robert James Farley, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA Andrea Fischer-Tahir, independent scholar Nouri Gana, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA Kifah Hanna, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA Sarah Hudson, Connors State College, Warner, Oklahoma, USA Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA John Tofik Karam, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Kathryn Kalemkerian, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Ebtihal Mahadeen, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Matthew Parnell, American University in Cairo, Egypt Nadine Sinno, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA




Generations of Dissent


Book Description

Situated in the fields of contemporary literary and cultural studies, the ten essays collected in Generations of Dissent shed light on the artistic creativity, cultural production, intellectual movements, and acts of political dissidence across the Middle East and North Africa. Born of the contributors’ research on dissidence and state co-option in a variety of artistic and creative fields, the volume’s core themes reflect the notion that the recent Arab uprisings did not appear in a cultural, political, or historical vacuum. Rather than focus on how protestors "finally" broke the walls of fear created by authoritarian regimes in the region, these essays show that the uprisings were rooted in multiple generations and various acts of resistance decades prior to 2010–11. Firat and Taleghani’s volume maps the complicated trajectories of artistic and creative dissent across time and space, showing how artists have challenged institutions and governments over the past six decades.