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31. Literature Born of Captivity

Author:
Mohammad AlAhmad
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
CCAS Professor Mohammad AlAhmad discusses how Arab prison literature goes beyond documenting the prison experience to serve as an instrument of resistance and to hold readers accountable for their silence.
Topic:
Torture, Prisons/Penal Systems, Authoritarianism, Political Prisoners, and Literature
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, Egypt, and Morocco

32. The Surplus Woman: Unmarried in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918

Author:
Catherine L. Dollard
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The first German women’s movement embraced the belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as the Frauenüberschuß, as a central leitmotif in the campaign for reform. Proponents of the female surplus held that the advances of industry and urbanization had upset traditional marriage patterns and left too many bourgeois women without a husband. This book explores the ways in which the realms of literature, sexology, demography, socialism, and female activism addressed the perceived plight of unwed women. Case studies of reformers, including Lily Braun, Ruth Bré, Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne, Helene Lange, Alice Salomon, Helene Stöcker, and Clara Zetkin, demonstrate the expansive influence of the discourse surrounding a female surfeit. By combining the approaches of cultural, social, and gender history, The Surplus Woman provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which imperial Germans conceptualized anxiety about female marital status as both a product and a reflection of changing times.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Political Activism, Women, and Literature
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and Central Europe

33. ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL VOL. XXVI, No. 1

Author:
Hussam R. Ahmed, Gil Z. Hochberg, Susanna Ferguson, Éric Verdeil, Louis Yako, Hend F. Alawadhi, Susanna Ferguson, Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Arbella Bet-Shlimon, Hilal Alkan, Marwan D. Hanania, Simon Davis, Chris Rominger, and Corinna Mullin
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Arab Studies Journal
Institution:
Arab Studies Institute
Abstract:
We are proud to feature a diverse array of disciplines and approaches in this issue. In “Te Nahda in Parliament: Taha Husayn’s Career Building Knowledge Production Institutions, 1922-1952” Hussam R. Ahmed traces the bureaucratic and institutional force of one of the most infuential intellectuals of the twentieth century. He reveals new ways to think about the ties between intellectual work, knowledge production, pedagogy, and the Egyptian state. In “‘Jerusalem, We Have a Problem’: Larissa Sansour’s Sci-Fi Trilogy and the Impetus of Dystopic Imagination,” Gil Hochberg ofers a reading of both the colonial legacies of the sci-f genre and the potential for its radical upending. Hochberg ponders the question of Palestine in a futuristic post-factual and post-national time of becoming. In “‘A Fever for an Education’: Pedagogical Tought and Social Transformation in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, 1861-1914,” Susanna Ferguson explores education’s appeal and promise of stability and reform in the nineteenth century Arab world. In “Infrastructure Crises in Beirut and the Struggle to (Not) Reform the Lebanese State,” Éric Verdeil approaches public infrastructure as a site of political struggle. Verdeil challenges the conventional readings that assert the power of neoliberalism and sectarianism to marginalize state institutions, showing instead how infrastructural policy instruments accentuate Lebanese society’s gaps and inequalities. Finally, in “If We All Leave, Who Will Cut the String: Exiled Intellectuals in Ghada al-Samman’s Tought,” Louis Yako contributes an engaged read of exile, the role of the intellectual, and the possibilities of revolution. Tis issue also features the usual robust array of book reviews. With this issue, we bid farewell to a long-time pillar of Arab Studies Journal and its book review team. Allison Brown, an inimitable editor and thinker, will be departing afer a decade of teaching and leading our team with the intellectual depth and editorial precision that have made the journal what it is today. While she may not grace our pages, she will always be part of the ASJ family.
Topic:
Education, History, Infrastructure, Reform, Intellectual History, Colonialism, and Literature
Political Geography:
Middle East, North Africa, Lebanon, and Egypt

34. New Azerbaijani Prose in the Context of All Turkish Literature

Author:
Nurlana Muzaffar Aliyeva
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Nowa Polityka Wschodnia
Institution:
Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Abstract:
This article is dedicated to the problems of new Azerbaijani prose. Author analyzed problems of new Azerbaijani prose in the context of all Turkish literature. The features of Azerbaijani literature of XVII–XIX century are investigated through some of factors which touch nationality, religious, modernity. Examples of Azerbaijani writers’ works of art are given in the article. The human conception is more criticized in works of writers.
Topic:
Nationalism, Religion, Arts, Culture, Literature, and Modernity
Political Geography:
Turkey and Azerbaijan

35. Assemblages of Land Loss and Immigration in Film and Literature about the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Author:
David E. Toohey
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
Literature and film that are relevant to a concept of land and immigration that promotes ecologically sustainable and anti-racist visions are analyzed here to create an assemblage, based on Deleuze and Guattari’s theories. This is done to accomplish three tasks. The first is to disrupt misconceptions of a dichotomy between ecological activism and immigrant rights activism. The second task is to address the connections between ecologies and immigration and diaspora communities while taking into account issues of control over land that have often been important to people who immigrate from Central America and Mexico to the United States. As a third task, the idea of assemblage is modified to integrate Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation and Laclau and Mouffe’s idea of discourses of positive and negative activation in discourse to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s theory through a more specific application to situations of political economy that have been so intertwined with immigration, land, and ecology in Central America, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest. Accordingly, the aim is to illuminate ecological points of view that are from immigrant and diaspora communities, rather than hostile to or imposed upon them.
Topic:
Immigration, Film, Borders, and Literature
Political Geography:
Mexico and United States of America

36. Byzantine Satire: The Background in the Timarion

Author:
Iakovos Menelaou
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
In this paper, I examine the twelfth century Byzantine satire Timarion. I seek to analyse the background of the work, through a focus on the plot and characters, the classical sources that influenced the Byzantine author and the issues of date and authorship which should be seen in relation to the targets of his attack. While there is no certainty about the identity of the author, the Timarion was written, probably, by a learned author who had knowledge of classical authors and medical theories of his era. This is obvious in the way he embodies these traditions in his satire. Similarly to satires of the classical period, the Timarion’s attack is directed at several directions.
Topic:
Literature and Byzantine Empire
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, and North Africa

37. ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL VOL. XXV, NO. 1

Author:
Ghenwa Hayek, Geoffrey P. Levin, Jamil Mouawad, Hannes Bauman, Dylan Baun, Samar Kanafani, Joan Chaker, Reem Bailony, Paul Kingston, Linda Sayed, Maya Mikdashi, Jeffrey G. Karam, and Hichama Safieddine
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Arab Studies Journal
Institution:
Arab Studies Institute
Abstract:
Since the November 2016 elections, the dying gasps of US exceptionalism has meant the intensification of attacks on the lives and movement of people from the Arab world. The travel ban constitutes a US policy to sanction the very people that previous administrations as well as the current one have bombed. As borders close, the number of refugees fleeing the horrors of war in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq increases. In this tautology, the new US administration has resoundingly adopted policies of blaming the victims of decades of US war and hegemony. Within this constellation, the production of knowledge as well as higher education more broadly are more crucial than ever. In an era when the status of the fact has eroded at rapid speed, scholars and educators are on the frontlines of guarding the need for empirically grounded and theoretically sound research and scholarship. It is in this spirit that we offer our most recent issue of Arab Studies Journal. Ghenwa Hayek sheds new light on the notion of the “ordinary” and provides an innovative view on contemporary Beirut by tracing a young generation of novelists. Geoffrey P. Levin traces the trajectory of the Organization of Arab Students in the United States as it shifted from mainstream Arab nationalism supportive of US-Arab ties to anti-imperial radicalism. We are also honored to include a special section on the state in Lebanon. The past few years have featured renewed elite and popular mobilizations around particular state institutions and services: waste management, municipal elections, taxes, and more. The existence, nature, and role of al-dawla (the state) has been a persistent feature of public discourses about contemporary politics in Lebanon. In this special section, we feature a number of historical, contemporary, and theoretical considerations of the Lebanes state. Jamil Mouawad and Hannes Bauman, this special section’s co-editors, introduce the articles by considering the need for and stakes of taking more seriously this ephemeral and nebulous network of institutions and individuals. The section features three articles, each making a unique and productive intervention into the broader scholarship on Lebanon as well as that of the state. Complementing the special section is a critical assortment of book reviews of recent works on Lebanese history, contemporary politics, and their implications for the state in Lebanon.
Topic:
Education, History, Infrastructure, State, and Literature
Political Geography:
Middle East, North Africa, and United States of America

38. Role of Punjab’s literary and cultural institutions in countering extremism

Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS)
Abstract:
This policy brief summarizes key deliberations of the last of six provincial-level policy dialogues on counter-violent extremism in Punjab organized by Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS). The policy dialogue series was part of the efforts by PIPS to analyze the security and conflict-related issues in Pakistan, with a view to identifying practical ways and means to counter violent extremism.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Culture, Violent Extremism, Literature, and Countering Violent Extremism
Political Geography:
Pakistan, India, and Punjab

39. The Politics of Reading: CCAS's Qatar Postdoctoral Fellow reflects on the uses of literature as a tool for cultural understanding

Author:
Elizabeth Kelley
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
Oh, I just loved The Kite Runner,” people in North America sometimes tell me when I explain what my research is about: the translation and circulation of Arabic novels in English. In these cases, the individuals, who are not usually scholars or students of Arabic or the Arab world, go on to explain how much they enjoyed Khaled Hosseini’s novel, how they felt it helped them to learn about life in Afghanistan and what it was like to grow up there. In some ways, The Kite Runner is quite far from my research topic, given that the novel was written in English, was not translated from any language, and that the author had been living in the United States for decades prior to writing it. Not to mention that Arabic is not the language of Afghanistan, and although it is part of the Muslim world, Afghanistan is not generally considered part of the Arab world. Thus, linking Afghani literature with literature of the Arab world may rely on collapsing regional, linguistic, and cultural differences under the undifferentiated sign of Islam.
Topic:
Research, Literature, Higher Education, and Translation
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Middle East, and Arab Countries

40. Syrian Scholar Finds Safe Haven at CCAS: A Conversation with Visiting Lecturer Mohammad AlAhmad

Author:
Will Todman, Mohammad AlAhmad, and Dana Dairani
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
On April 22, 2015, CCAS Visiting Lecturer Dr. Mohammad AlAmad and his family left their home and lives in Syria behind. “Human smugglers drove us to the Turkish border,” says AlAhmad, “and then my wife and I carried our two young children, walking through barbed wire and muddy water into Turkey. We were full of trepidation, fear, and the pain of being displaced.” Though AlAhmad left Syria because he had been accepted to participate in the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund, which provides support for threatened scholars and places them with visiting appointments at partner academic institutions, he did not yet know his family’s ultimate destination. Once in Turkey, AlAhmad learned that his appointment would be at Georgetown, starting in August.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Refugees, Islamic State, Arab Spring, Syrian War, Literature, Revolution, and Higher Education
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Syria, North America, United States of America, and Raqqa