Examining late twentieth-century autobiographical writing by Arab women novelists, poets, and artists, this essay collection explores the ways in which Arab women have portrayed and created their identities within differing social environments. The collection goes well beyond dismantling standard notions of Arab female subservience, exploring the many ways Arab women writers have learned to speak to each other, to their readers, and to the world at large. Drawing from a rich body of literature, the essays attest to the surprisingly lively and committed roles Arab women play in varied geographic regions, at home and abroad. These recent writings assess how the interplay between individual, private, ethnic identity and the collective, public, global world of politics has impacted Arab women’s rights.

This book presents theoretical and methodical cultural concerns in teaching literatures from non-American cultures along with issues of cross-cultural communication, cultural competency and translation. Covering topics such as the 1001 Nights, Maqamat, Arabic poetry, women’s writing, classical poetics, issues of gender, race, and class, North African concerns, language acquisition through literature, Arab-spring writing, women’s correspondence, issues connected with the so called nahdah (revival) movement in the 19th century and many others, the book provides perspectives and topics that serve in both the planning of new courses and accommodation to already existing programs.

This book offers an exploration of masculinity in the literature of the Arab East (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq) in the context of a specific set of anxieties about gender roles and sexuality in Arab societies. While gender studies in the area have focused primarily on the situation of women, the treatment of Arab men as gendered subjects has fallen behind. Samira Aghacy’s rich analysis presents gender relations not within a fixed biological mold but rather as a complex phenomenon fraught with ambivalence and operating within particular historical and geopolitical settings. Through a series of close readings of twenty contemporary Arabic novels, Aghacy presents a mosaic of masculinities that challenges the generally held view of an essentialized archetypal Arab man and that mirrors a contested vision of manliness where men figure in diverse sociocultural environments. This groundbreaking work reveals the volatile nature of masculinity and its inextricability from femininity.

This book examines the poetics of autobiographical masterpieces written in Arabic by Leila Abouzeid, Hanan al-Shaykh, Samuel Shimon, Abd al-Rahman Munif, Salim Barakat, Mohamed Choukri and Hanna Abu Hanna. These literary works articulate the life story of each author in ways that undermine the expectation that the "self"—the "auto" of autobiography—would be the dominant narrative focus. Although every autobiography naturally includes and relates to others to one degree or another, these autobiographies tend to foreground other characters, voices, places and texts to the extent that at times it appears as though the autobiographical subject has dropped out of sight, even to the point of raising the question: is this an autobiography? These are indeed autobiographies, Sheetrit argues, albeit articulating the story of the self in unconventional ways. Sheetrit offers in-depth literary studies that expose each text’s distinct strategy for life narrative. Crucial to this book’s approach is the innovative theoretical foundation of relational autobiography that reveals the grounding of the self within the collective—not as symbolic of it. This framework exposes the intersection of the story of the autobiographical subject with the stories of others and the tensions between personal and communal discourse. Relational strategies for self-representation expose a movement between two seemingly opposing desires—the desire to separate and dissociate from others, and the desire to engage and integrate within a particular relationship, community, culture or milieu. This interplay between disentangling and conscious entangling constitutes the leitmotif that unites the studies in this book.

Covering 60 years of materials, this bibliography cites translations, studies, and other writings, which represent Iraq's national literature, including recent works of numerous Iraqi writers living in Western exile. The volume serves as a guide to three interrelated data: o Translations that have appeared since 1950, as books or as individual items (poems, short stories, novel extracts, plays, diaries) in print-and non-print publications in Iraq and other Arab and English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. o Relevant studies and other secondary sources including selected reviews and author interviews, which cover Iraqi literature and writers. o The scope of displacement or dispersion of Iraqi writers, artists, and other intellectuals who have been uprooted and are now living in exile in Arab or other Western countries. By drawing attention to a largely overlooked but relevant and extensive literature accessible in English, this first of its kind book will serve as an invaluable guide to students of contemporary Iraq, modern Arabic literature, and other fields such as women's studies, postcolonial studies, third world literature, American-Arab/Muslim Relations, and Diaspora studies.

Arab Voices in Diaspora offers a wide-ranging overview and an insightful study of the field of anglophone Arab literature produced across the world. The first of its kind, it chronicles the development of this literature from its inception at the turn of the past century until the post 9/11 era. The book sheds light not only on the historical but also on the cultural and aesthetic value of this literary production, which has so far received little scholarly attention. It also seeks to place anglophone Arab literary works within the larger nomenclature of postcolonial, emerging, and ethnic literature, as it finds that the authors are haunted by the same ‘hybrid’, ‘exilic’, and ‘diasporic’ questions that have dogged their fellow postcolonialists. Issues of belonging, loyalty, and affinity are recognized and dealt with in the various essays, as are the various concerns involved in cultural and relational identification. The contributors to this volume come from different national backgrounds and share in examining the nuances of this emerging literature. Authors discussed include Elmaz Abinader, Diana Abu-Jaber, Leila Aboulela, Leila Ahmed, Rabih Alameddine, Edward Atiyah, Shaw Dallal, Ibrahim Fawal, Fadia Faqir, Khalil Gibran, Suheir Hammad, Loubna Haikal, Nada Awar Jarrar, Jad El Hage, Lawrence Joseph, Mohja Kahf, Jamal Mahjoub, Hisham Matar, Dunya Mikhail, Samia Serageldine, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ameen Rihani, Mona Simpson, Ahdaf Soueif, and Cecile Yazbak. Contributors: Victoria M. Abboud, Diya M. Abdo, Samaa Abdurraqib, Marta Cariello, Carol Fadda–Conrey, Cristina Garrigós, Lamia Hammad, Yasmeen Hanoosh, Waïl S. Hassan, Richard E. Hishmeh, Syrine Hout, Layla Al Maleh, Brinda J. Mehta, Dawn Mirapuri, Geoffrey P. Nash, Boulus Sarru, Fadia Fayez Suyoufie

In memoirs, Arab writers have invoked solitude in moments of deep public involvement. Focusing on Taha Hussein, Sonallah Ibrahim, Assia Djebar, Latifa al-Zayyat, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Edward Said, Haifa Zangana, and Radwa Ashour, this book reads a range of autobiographical forms, sources, and affinities with other literatures.Taking a comparative approach, Nasser shows the local sources of contemporary Arab autobiography, adaptations of a global genre, and cultural exchange. She also examines different aspects of the contemporary autobiography as it has evolved in the Arab world during the past half-century, focusing on the particularity of the genre written in different languages but pertaining to one overarching Arab culture. Drawing on memoirs, testimonies, autobiographical novels, poetic autobiography, journals, and diaries, she examines solitude and national struggles in contemporary Arab autobiography.

Both a summative description of the field and an exploration of new directions, this multidisciplinary reader addresses issues central to the fields of Arab American, US Muslim, and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) American studies. Taking a broad conception of the Americas, this collection simultaneously registers and critically reflects upon major themes in the field, including diaspora, migration, empire, race and racialization, securitization, and global South solidarity. The collection will be essential reading for scholars in Arab/SWANA American studies, Asian American studies, and race, ethnicity, and Indigenous studies, now and well into the future. Contributors include: Evelyn Alsultany, Carol W. N. Fadda, Hisham D. Aidi, Nadine Naber, Therí Pickens, Steven Salaita, Ella Shohat and Sarah M.A. Gualtieri.

This book adopts an integrated approach to the study of contact literature through collaboration between theories of World Englishes and translation studies. The author proposes an interactive framework that integrates linguistic and cultural perspectives, through the analysis of selected Anglo-Arab and Arab-American contact literary texts: Samia Serageldine’s The Cairo House (2000), Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage (1999), Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999), Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (2000), and Abdelkebir Khatibi’s Love in Two Languages (1990). The author then discusses the pedagogical implications of bilingual creativity via a language in literature approach. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of translation studies, literature and cultural studies.

The present book is a journey of many women across the world who have struggled to give women's studies visibility. Drawing upon the contributors' diverse experiences and concerns, it explores the metamorphosis of women's studies from the early days to date.