Djeha—also known as Juha, Jeh’a, and Ch’ha, among many variations—is an iconic figure, the trickster hero of an oral folktale tradition that has existed for centuries. The famous Maghrebian prankster is a poor, cunning, and resourceful character that delights in immoral behavior. Orientalists Auguste Mouliéras (1855-1931) and René Basset (1855-1924) were among the first Frenchmen to collect and translate popular Berber folktales. Today, trickster folktales from Algeria’s mountainous Kabylia region are not well known in the Anglophone world, even though they continue to be highly popular in France and in North Africa. Djeha, the North African Trickster is an annotated, critical translation of Auguste Mouliéras’s folktale collection Les Fourberies de Si Djeh’a, first published in French in 1892. The volume contains sixty tales and an in-depth introduction in which Christa C. Jones discusses jocular literature in Islam, the widespread oral folktale tradition linked to Djeha and his Turkish twin brother Nasreddin Hoca, and the impact of colonialism on the gathering and dissemination of the tales. The trickster is at the center of six themed chapters: “Family and Kinship”; “Animal Tales"; “Faces, Places, or Daily Life in the Village"; “Foodways”; “The Intricacies of Hospitality: Beware of Friends and Foes!"; and “Religion, Death, and the Afterlife.” Each chapter contains ten folktales preceded by a short introduction that contextualizes the pieces using historical, folkloristic, literary, and ethnographical sources. Ultimately, the book contributes to the preservation of an ancestral oral heritage, delivering this enduring character to new audiences.

Cultural Representation of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen, is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural work that provides insights into the realities of second wives the world over. This book allows the reader a three-dimensional view of the second wife experience. It asks: What does it mean, and what does it feel like, to be a second wife in a polygamous union or in a monogamous partnership? Is there a difference? Together, the writers in this book cleverly create an in-depth study of the subject through the productions referred to in the title, to offer a different approach to the popularly held views of the second wife. The book addresses the intricacies, customs, practices and lifestyles of the various Eastern and Western cultures and demonstrates the abilities of the Humanities to connect and interrelate with other disciplines as well as with the reader’s own world.

This study presents the first broad analysis of Maghrebian women's dramatic literature undertaken in English. The book considers sixty-five plays and works of performance art by they twenty-eight women dramatists from the Maghreb.

Profound analysis of French comics through a postcolonial lens Postcolonialism and migration are major themes in contemporary French comics and have roots in the Algerian War (1954–62), antiracist struggle, and mass migration to France. This volume studies comics from the end of the formal dismantling of French colonial empire in 1962 up to the present. French cartoonists of ethnic-minority and immigrant heritage are a major focus, including Zeina Abirached (Lebanon), Yvan Alagbé (Benin), Baru (Italy), Enki Bilal (former Yugoslavia), Farid Boudjellal (Algeria and Armenia), José Jover (Spain), Larbi Mechkour (Algeria), and Roland Monpierre (Guadeloupe). The author analyzes comics representing a gamut of perspectives on immigration and postcolonial ethnic minorities, ranging from staunch defense to violent rejection. Individual chapters are dedicated to specific artists, artistic collectives, comics, or themes, including avant-gardism, undocumented migrants in comics, and racism in far-right comics.

Staging Cultural Encounters tells stories about performances of cultural encounter and cultural exchange during the US tour of the Algerian theater troupe Istijmam Culturelle in 2016. Jane E. Goodman follows the Algerian theater troupe as they prepare for and then tour the U.S. under the auspices of the Center Stage program, sponsored by the US State Department to promote cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. The title of the play Istijmam produced was translated as "Apples," written by Abdelkader Alloula, a renowned Algerian playwright, director, and actor who was assassinated in 1994. Goodman take readers on tour with the actors as they move from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to the large state universities of New Hampshire and Indiana, and from a tiny community theater in small-town New England to the stage of the avant-garde La MaMa Theater in New York City. Staging Cultural Encounters takes up conundrums of cross-cultural encounter, challenges in translation, and audience reception, offering a frank account of the encounters with American audiences and the successes and disappointments of the experience of exchange.

The contributions to this volume in the African Theatre series make clear that the role of women in the theatre across the continent has changed as control is mainly held by literate elites and women's traditional standing has been lost to men.

Offering an introduction to Victorian culture and society, this glossary is also a route-map to further study. Designed specifically with undergraduates in mind, it contains around 400 short and accessible explanations of the key words, events, figures and concepts in the study of the Victorian period. From gothic and the Great Exhibition to origin of species and Oscar Wilde, this glossary gives an interdisciplinary overview of Victorian literature, culture and society, and offers directions for further reading. Covering literary topics, traditions and movements, as well as the period's history, culture and politics, the entries are fully cross-referenced and assume no prior knowledge, making this a useful reference on the Victorian period. The index makes it even more accessible, allowing the reader quickly to find information on topics not listed as individual entries.

An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readers Al-Hasan al-Wazzan--born in Granada to a Muslim family that in 1492 went to Morocco, where he traveled extensively on behalf of the sultan of Fez--is known to historians as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa to be published in Europe (in 1550). He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. In Trickster Travels, Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.

Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on “the lord of the smoking mirror,” one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca’s nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations—objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull—and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.

This book aims to offer a broad history of theatre in Africa. The roots of African theatre are ancient and complex and lie in areas of community festival, seasonal rhythm and religious ritual, as well as in the work of popular entertainers and storytellers. Since the 1950s, in a movement that has paralleled the political emancipation of so much of the continent, there has also grown a theatre that comments back from the colonized world to the world of the colonists and explores its own cultural, political and linguistic identity. A History of Theatre in Africa offers a comprehensive, yet accessible, account of this long and varied chronicle, written by a team of scholars in the field. Chapters include an examination of the concepts of 'history' and 'theatre'; North Africa; Francophone theatre; Anglophone West Africa; East Africa; Southern Africa; Lusophone African theatre; Mauritius and Reunion; and the African diaspora.