{"id":15988,"date":"2018-04-02T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15988"},"modified":"2018-04-02T07:00:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T11:00:49","slug":"teaching-with-arabic-literature-in-translation-djinn-stories-poetry-madness-and-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/teaching-with-arabic-literature-in-translation-djinn-stories-poetry-madness-and-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: \u2018Djinn Stories: Poetry, Madness, and\u00a0Memory\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Arab Literature (In English) & BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a>\u00a0)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

ArabLit\u2019s ongoing series on\u00a0<\/em>Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation<\/em><\/a>\u00a0continues with a conversation between ArabLit\u2019s editor and Shir Alon, Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow at Washington & Lee, around her course \u201cDjinn Stories: Poetry, Madness, and Memory.\u201d A course schedule is at the bottom:<\/em><\/p>\n

What inspired this djinntastic course? What did it initially cohere around?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Shir Alon:\u00a0<\/strong>This course was designed in answer to a very practical need \u2013 I had to teach a First Year Seminar and make it attractive to incoming freshmen with little knowledge (or specific interest) in the Middle East, in Arabic, or in literature, for that matter. The Arabic program at W&L is fairly new, and while it is growing fast (thanks to the relentless Antoine Edwards), it still needs to \u201cmake a name for itself\u201d on campus. So to be honest, initially the djinn were a hook. It is only later that I realized what a productive frame this is for a broad-scope Arabic literature course, since it allowed us to draw connections between classical and modern texts without wasting too much time on facile questions of authenticity or imitation, which often dominate\u00a0historical survey of modern Arabic literature.<\/p>\n

Secondly, this was an occasion for me to work through some questions I am dealing with in my own research. I write a lot about the politics of memory, and I was bothered by the manner \u201chauntology,\u201d or ghosts and spirits, had become our most common metaphor for thinking about how the past exists in the present, or about how memory and trauma operate. Despite its appeal, I think there are some serious shortcomings to this model, in terms of the kind of political action it inspires. Djinn, however, are a different kind of supernatural entity. Unlike ghosts, they are not remnants of a past that we presume dead, but live lives parallel to ours. I had a sense that there is a different kind of politics to be gleaned here, particularly when djinn are evoked in modern works of literature and visual arts. I wanted to get a better sense of this genealogy, and the students were great for working through this together with me.<\/p>\n

Finally, since this was a First Year Seminar, and therefore a\u00a0first\u00a0experience of working closely\u00a0with texts for most students, I wanted to make sure they acquire tools to think of literary genres, forms, translation, or adaptation. The trope of the djinn could bring together an astonishing array of different modes of writing and storytelling.<\/p>\n

Are most students relatively familiar-ish with djinn when they start the class? What sort of baggage do they have \/ not have around djinn vs. other courses that come together around Arab and Arabic literatures?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>The majority of the students have never heard of djinn, and it took them a while to connect whatever they have encountered in the past, such as Disney\u2019s\u00a0Aladdin<\/em>, with this rich cultural tradition. I did have a number of Muslim students who had heard about\u00a0djinn in their families, but they were not familiar with textual traditions associated with them.<\/p>\n

In general, this was an astoundingly disenchanted and un-haunted group of students \u2013 at the beginning of the term I asked for stories, either personal or family tales, of encounters with the supernatural, and no one had anything to offer. I wonder if the answer to this question would change now, after we have spent twelve weeks talking about demons.<\/p>\n

You call week one (the one that\u2019s \u201chaunted by Orientalism\u201d) \u201cI Dream of Jeannie.\u201d What role does humor (and playfulness) play in course design?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>Since the materials are so foreign to most of the students, it was important to find ways to make them accessible, and humor is probably the best. The world of the djinn, after all, is not just about horror or dread, but also about wit and goofiness. I wasn\u2019t planning on it, but it quickly became clear that humor is one of the main theme we will deal with in this class, from Ibn Shuhaid\u2019s\u00a0The Treatise of Familiar Spirits and Demons<\/em>, a biting satire of the literary scene of 11th<\/sup>century Cordova (in which two asses hold a poetry competition), through Emile Habibi\u2019s brilliant use of humor as resilience and resistance\u00a0in Palestine, to Ahmed Saadawi\u2019s rewriting of Frankenstein as a dark satirical dystopia\u00a0in Baghdad following the American invasion.<\/p>\n

In this first class, we did watch clips from\u00a0I Dream of Jeannie\u00a0<\/em>(the 1960s sitcom), alongside some\u00a0medieval manuscript illustrations<\/a>\u00a0of djinn. The comparison, quite funny in itself, allowed me to introduce the topic of orientalist stereotypes in the Western media, and give out a general warning\u00a0of our own orientalist prejudices when reading Middle Eastern literature. More importantly, it allowed us to start thinking about djinn as embodiments of social values, needs, or desires: contrasting, for example, the encyclopedic desire leading to the collection of nightmarish creatures in al-Isfahani\u2019s\u00a0Book of Wonders<\/em>\u00a0(14th<\/sup>\u00a0c.) to the capitalist, wish-fulfilling, blond fantasy (in love with an astronaut! The very emblem of the wanderer to the limits of our world!) of the sitcom.<\/p>\n

What work do Edward Lane and Mohamed Asad do in starting things off?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>Lane and Asad did a lot for us. The two excerpts we read appear as appendixes to Robert Lebling\u2019s\u00a0Legends of the Fire Spirits<\/em>. Lane, rigorous Orientalist as he is, gave us a very helpful taxonomy of the different kinds of djinn we were to encounter in future readings. Asad, as a modern mu\u2019tazili, gave us a sense of the effort to reconcile djinn, as they appear in the Quran, with modern rationalist or scientific thought. He creates an analogy between djinn and quantum particles, which exist even though we don\u2019t have the technology or tools to witness their existence, except in extreme situations.<\/p>\n

More importantly, reading the two texts together allowed us to reflect on the two writers\u2019 preferences and shortcomings: Lane\u2019s collapse of textual traditions, historical precedents, and the beliefs of his neighbors in Cairo into a typically Orientalist timeless mess, as well as Asad\u2019s aversion to anything that could smell of \u201cfolklore\u201d or \u201csuperstition\u201d in favor of a rationalist model of religious experience.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read Amira el-Zein\u2019s\u00a0Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn.\u00a0<\/em>Which poets are discussed, how does she approach the ways in which djinn inspired them, and how does this work into the course discussion & close reading of the texts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>El-Zein\u2019s study\u00a0is useful as an archive, an overview of texts and anecdotes in which djinn play a role. She also (sometimes apologetically) reads the Islamic tradition against Western cultures\u2019 supernatural traditions, so her chapter facilitated a discussion on the similarities between djinn and muses, and different ways of thinking about talent, inspiration, and the role of technical poetic skill. Her chapter made djinn seem like a very familiar notion, perhaps too familiar, according to some students. We read it together with Ibn Shuhaid\u2019s\u00a0The Treatise of Familiar Spirits and Demons<\/em>, which necessitated an introduction to the particular value systems associated with classical Arabic poetry \u2013 so different from our own in terms of formal constraints, themes, and concepts of originality or plagiarism. El-Zein helped us realize that this book, beyond being a satire of poetic court culture, poking fun at Ibn Shuhaid\u2019s contemporaries, was also a theoretical debate on these poetic values.<\/p>\n

What does\u00a0Majnun Layla<\/em>\u00a0open up, beyond djinnical transgression and romance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em>SA:\u00a0<\/strong>Majnun Layla<\/em>\u00a0provided the occasion to talk about adaptation, variation, and the \u201cauthorless\u201d nature of folk stories. We started with some translations of poetry associated with Qays Ibn al-Mulawwah, the \u201coriginal\u201d Majnun, and continued with Nizami\u2019s 12th<\/sup>century Persian adaptation. Then the students, working in groups, watched and analyzed modern adaptations of the story \u2013 from Ahmed Shawqi\u2019s 1939 Egyptian operetta featuring Muhammad abd al-Wahab and Isfahan, through a number of Bollywood versions, to\u00a0Habibi<\/em>, a 2011 film based in Gaza, by the director Susan Youssef. Trying to account for this story\u2019s lasting power, we discussed what persists between the different versions, and what changes. What is the minimum you need to keep\u00a0Majnun Layla<\/em>\u00a0as\u00a0Majnun Layla<\/em>? What are the bare elements that make up this story, and what are the different ways people have used it? The story and various adaptations gave us plenty to talk about, such as irrational passion, madness and its sources, poetry as a container for these, and the choice to reject social values (including those of standard romance \u2013 in Nizami\u2019s version nothing stops Majnun from marrying Layla except his own devotion to his devotion). The students also loved Nizami\u2019s poetic language, which was something I did not expect.<\/p>\n

What sort of discussions happen around the\u00a0Thousand and One Nights\u00a0<\/em>(and their extended lives in other languages)? What are the students looking for, and finding?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>We had two sets of readings from\u00a0Thousand and One Nights<\/em>: the first included stories about the interactions between powerful djinn and witty, resourceful humans that can outsmart them. We explored the possibility that folktales, as stories that circulate orally and widely, contain knowledge or values relevant to a certain class. More specifically, we discussed the way power is represented in the stories, and the depiction of women, slaves, or the poor. The students were especially interested in the roles women play in these stories, and astutely noticed that, whether good or evil, women are always associated with sorcery \u2013 they have powers that cannot be quite controlled or understood\u2026<\/p>\n

Since we had talked extensively about adaptations when we covered\u00a0Majnun Layla<\/em>, we didn\u2019t explore much of\u00a0Alf Layla wa-Layla<\/em>\u2019s afterlives. I did take the occasion to assign a translation comparison exercise (the students compared passages from Burton\u2019s 1885 translation with Haddawy\u2019s 1990 translation). This is something I always try to incorporate in my classes since it is such an effective tool for honing close reading skills.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim al-Koni is a wonderful place to go next. Why pair\u00a0The Scarecrow\u00a0<\/em>with Freud?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>We had actually already started reading Freud\u2019s essay \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d together with \u201cCity of Brass\u201d from\u00a0A<\/em>\u00a0Thousand and One Nights<\/em>, and it helped us identify classical and familiar elements of gothic horror, which appear already in that story (automatons, empty urban centers, sexy tempting specters). Then we used Freud as a bridge to al-Koni\u2019s\u00a0The Scarecrow<\/em>, the first \u201cmodern\u201d novel we discussed in the course. Freud suggests that we are overtaken by a sense of the \u201cuncanny\u201d when something familiar to us is suddenly defamiliarized, or more precisely, when we encounter something that\u00a0reminds us of\u00a0material we have repressed. For Freud, the repressed material is always primal fears and animistic worldviews, such as the sense that everything in the world is animated and connected to our own thoughts and consciousness.<\/p>\n

I wanted the students to understand the idea of horror resulting from an encounter with repressed residues, or with things we have preferred not to deal with, since I think it is very fruitful. At the same time, I wanted them to realize how arrogant Freud is in this article (he goes a long way to emphasize that as a modern scientist who has overcome his primitive superstitions, he rarely feels the uncanny). This is where al-Koni comes in: he writes a world strange but similar enough to ours, in which Frued\u2019s homocentric materialism \u2013 essentially the idea of an isolated individual operating in a dumb world \u2013 appears ridiculously and dangerously delusional.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What does\u00a0Seraj Assi\u2019s article<\/a>\u00a0about Emile Habibi and \u201ccollective autobiography\u201d highlight about the context of Habibi\u2019s writing, and what does it illuminate for student-readers about his choice to write about the supernatural? And\u00a0\u201cGothic Palestine\u201d is a very evocative title: What resonances are there to be drawn out between these different writers (Darwish, Zaqtan, Habibi) writing in different periods and different genres?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>In these two weeks we worked with a constellation of works by Palestinian writers and artists that in some ways evoke the supernatural or the spectral. Working through a trope, rather than using a geopolitical framework, allowed us to reflect on numerous manifestations of the fragmented Palestinian experience and its afterlives in various artistic genres. It helped us see continuities and connections as well as distinctions.<\/p>\n

Emile Habibi\u2019s\u00a0Saraya The Ogre\u2019s Daughter<\/em>\u00a0posits folktales as a shared cultural repertoire. Saraya, Habibi notes, is a figure from a Palestinian folktale, but also the name that the narrator gives to his childhood sweetheart, who presumably was expelled from Haifa in 1948. Habibi asks, at the beginning of this novel, who is the ogre and who is Saraya, and his constantly changing answers allowed us to talk about memory, betrayal, responsibility, and violence, and how the supernatural can act as a gateway to the past, of the individual and of the community.\u00a0Assi\u2019s article gave us crucial historical background on the \u201cparadoxical\u201d condition, as he calls it, of Habibi as Palestinian citizen of Israel. His notion of \u201ccollective autobiography\u201d is useful not only to understand why Habibi integrates folktales,\u00a0myth, and fantastic symbolic events into his personal\u00a0memoire, but also why he uses so many voices in this text, jumping from first person to third person narration \u2013 thinking of the story simultaneously as the story of an individual and the story of a community solves many confusions.<\/p>\n

Taking off from there, we started noticing how ghosts (as the past that lingers in the present, or the dead that is still among the living) are evoked in Palestinian poetry. In\u00a0Memory for Forgetfulness<\/em>, for example, Mahmud Darwish seems to suggest that the state of siege is equivalent to death in life. There is a wonderful scene in which the ghost of Izzedine Kalak makes a visit, only to un-emphatically insist that the next world is just like this one. But this is not a consistent position \u2013 in other poems, such as \u201cThey Didn\u2019t Ask: What\u2019s After Death,\u201d the poet asserts the resilience of the Palestinian voice, still living despite the conviction (of the historian, of the artist, of the military general) of its extinction. For Zaqtan, on the other hand, ghosts and history are a matter of personal, daily grief \u2013 he never makes an appeal to the mythical metaphysics that are so characteristic of Darwish (all of these, by the way, we read in Fady Joudah\u2019s evocative translations).<\/p>\n

We also watched two video works in this unit: Sharif Wakad\u2019s clever\u00a0\u201cTo Be Continued\u2026\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in which the students could identify the use of\u00a0A Thousand and One Nights<\/em>, as Shehrazade is replaced by suicide bomber eternally postponing his own death; and a documentation of \u201cThe Ghost of Manshia<\/a>,\u201d a project by Israeli artist Ronen Eidelman, which spurred a discussion on the ghosts haunting perpetrators, and the relationship between guilt and trauma.<\/p>\n

There was certainly something confusing about negotiating so many things together at once, but I think occasional confusion in the classroom is productive: it inspires questions rather than answers.<\/p>\n

I certainly remember the personal ghosts from Radwa\u2019s\u00a0Atyaf \/ Spectres,\u00a0<\/em>but I don\u2019t think I remember the supernatural? Why include Radwa\u2019s book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s funny, but before this question I never even considered this to be a course about the supernatural. I was primarily interested in the way djinn are evoked in modern works of literature to perform all sorts of new labor, in our world rather than in a parallel one. Since we talked about the meaning of telling Palestinian history as a ghost story in the previous week,\u00a0Spectres<\/em>\u00a0was the natural place to go (Shagar, the character that Radwa writes in this novel, is a historian writing a book about the Deir Yassin massacre called\u00a0The Spectres<\/em>). The novel led to a lot of very productive arguments on historiography, narrative, and the difference between history and literature, beyond a simple fact\/fiction binary (Haydn White\u2019s death coincided with that class, and his ghost definitely accompanied us).<\/p>\n

There is also an interesting conversation in\u00a0Spectres<\/em>\u00a0on the\u00a0qarina<\/em>, or one\u2019s double among the djinn, associating it with the ancient Egyptian\u00a0Ka<\/em>. It led us to a debate about the various practical uses of having a double (in life or in fiction).<\/p>\n

And\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad\u00a0<\/em>does all sorts of interesting things with the supernatural, in a violent crossover between traditions. What particular things are students reading for, finding, talking back around, making connections to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"SA:\u00a0<\/strong>It is really tempting to read\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad\u00a0<\/em>as a one-to-one allegory for the American invasion and the ensuing violence that destroyed Baghdad. Who does the whatsitname stand for? How does the breakup among his followers satirize the sectarian divisions among the opposition forces?\u00a0 The students are drawn to these readings because, among other things, they want to understand these very recent events, in which they too are implicated, and they hope that the novel will give them this knowledge. This doesn\u2019t work, of course. I try to give them enough background to understand the novel, but eventually I focus on questions of genre, and the manner Saadawi mixes different genres together to present a particular take on the war.<\/p>\n

Many of the students had read\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0in high school, and therefore are able to make a lot of observations about the way\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad\u00a0<\/em>diverges from the original, using the trope of the animated corpse to different ends. In general, they reacted to the novel more empathically than I expected. I found this to be so interesting!\u00a0Reading the novel, I was primarily interested in the absurd depictions of the hapless Tracking and Pursuit Unit, whereas the students were invested in the fate of the characters (Hadi, Elishva, and even the whatsitname) and the manner they evoke sympathy. My suggestion that this is a work of satire, full of (absurd, cynical, morbid) humor, was met with a lot of resistance \u2013 the students didn\u2019t think it was funny at all.<\/p>\n

Reading the novel as detective fiction went over much better. We used G. K. Chesterton\u2019s essay \u201cHow to Write a Detective Story,\u201d to identify how Saadawi uses some elements of the classic genre only to mess them up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not familiar with the film\u00a0Under the Shadows.\u00a0<\/em>Why this film, and why with\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>Under the Shadows<\/em>\u00a0is a terrifying horror film taking place in Tehran during the Iraq-Iran war. It diverges from our Arabic focus, but is grounded in the same Islamicate tradition of djinn we have been discussing for a while, so the tropes were largely familiar. At the same time, the film belongs squarely in the Hollywood psychological horror genre, so it fit perfectly with the previous class\u2019s discussion of genre fiction and its ability to shape and distort expectations. Like\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad, Under the Shadows\u00a0<\/em>uses djinn to elaborate on the effects of fear during war, but it also smartly evokes life in Iran shortly after the revolution, and (most horrifying for me) unspoken fears surrounding the experience of motherhood.<\/p>\n

Why end on the wonderful, teeming supernatural worlds of\u00a0Alif the Unseen\u00a0<\/em>(which was published before\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>)?\u00a0<\/em>What sort of jumping-off points & open-ended questions does it offer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>I wish we had more time to discuss\u00a0Alif the Unseen<\/em>! We end there partly because I knew we wouldn\u2019t have time to read through all of it, but it is such a thrilling read so I can hope that some students will finish it on their own.<\/p>\n

It is also an incredibly fun text to conclude with, since it evokes so many things we have discussed over the quarter. In some sense this novel brings us back full circle, to the beginning of the course: after a whole semester discussing djinn as a means to talk about other things \u2013 poetic inspiration, irrational desires, fears of death and violence, memory \u2013 we end with a text that insists, very attractively, that the djinn live by us, and not just for us to figure out our issues through them. It reopens the question of unseen and unimaginable things that might be just behind the corner. And it is also always better to end the semester with a revolution rather than with war.<\/p>\n

Are there books or texts you would remove or add when doing this class again? Moments you\u2019d like to revise or expand?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA:\u00a0<\/strong>Coming now to the end of the semester, I realize I would have liked to have dedicated more time to manuscripts of the occult and to folklore (for lack of a better name) \u2013 to the way people actually live their lives with the djinn, not just to their literary presence and symbolic potential. My own comfort zone as a literary scholar is clear, but if I teach this course again I think I would definitely need to step out of it.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Schedule for \u2018Djinn Stories: Poetry, Madness, and Memory\u2019<\/h3>\n

Week 1: I Dream of Jeannie\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

T: Introduction to course themes: Haunted by Orientalism<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Short introductory texts: Edward Lane (1836) , Muhammad Asad (1980)<\/li>\n
  • In class:<\/em>\u00a0Visual Representations, from Al-Isfahani to Christina Aguilera<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    R: Jinns in the Quran:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • S\u016brat al-Ra\u1e25man; S\u016brat al-Jinn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Optional: Mark Allen Peterson, \u201cFrom Jinn to Genies: Intertextuality, Media, and the Making of Global Folklore.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Week 2: Poets and their Jinn<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      • Abu Amir ibn Shuhaid,\u00a0The Treatise of Familiar Spirits and Demons\u00a0<\/em>(Risalat at-tawabi wa z-zawabi)<\/em>\u00a0(al-Andalus, 1025), pp. 59-96 (the \u201cIntroductory Essay\u201d is optional).<\/li>\n
      • Amira El-Zein, \u201cDjinns Inspiring Poets,\u201d from\u00a0Islam, Arabs and the Intelligent world of the Jinn<\/em>\u00a0(2009).<\/li>\n
      • In Class<\/em>: Ta\u02beaba\u1e6da Sharran, \u201cHow I Met the Ghoul\u201d (Qit\u2019a nuniyya,<\/em>\u00a06th<\/sup>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Week 3: Majnun and Love\u2019s Demons<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        • Poetry excerpts from Qays Ibn al-Mulawwah (two translations)<\/li>\n
        • Nizami,\u00a0The Story of Layla and Majnun<\/em>\u00a0(Persian, 1188)<\/li>\n
        • In class group work<\/em>: Cinematic adaptations of Majnun Layla, from Cairo to Bollywood.<\/li>\n
        • Optional:<\/em>\u00a0Qassim Haddad,\u00a0Chronicles of Majnun Layla<\/em>\u00a0(Poetry, Bahrain 1996)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Week 4: Jinn and Humans\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

            \n
          • Excerpts from\u00a0One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>\n
              \n
            • Tale of Merchant and the Jinni<\/li>\n
            • Tales of the Three Sheikhs<\/li>\n
            • City of Brass<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

              Week 5: Demonic Power\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                \n
              • Ibrahim al-Kouni,\u00a0The Scarecrow<\/em>\u00a0(Libya, 1998, 128pp.).<\/li>\n
              • Freud, \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d (1919).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                Week 6: Folktales and Loss\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                  \n
                • Emile Habibi,\u00a0Saraya The Ogre\u2019s Daughter<\/em>\u00a0(Palestine, 1991) pp. 13-56.<\/li>\n
                • Seraje Assi, \u201cMemory, Myth and the Military Government: Emile Habibi\u2019s Collective Autobiography,\u201d\u00a0Jerusalem Quarterly<\/em>\u00a052 (Winter 2013): 87-97.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                  Week 7: Gothic Palestine<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                    \n
                  • Emile Habibi, \u201cThe Odds and Ends Woman\u201d (1968)<\/li>\n
                  • Poetry selections from Mahmud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan<\/li>\n
                  • Excerpt from Darwish,\u00a0Memory for Forgetfulness<\/em><\/li>\n
                  • Celia Rothenberg, \u201cMy Wife is from the Jinn: Palestinian Men, Diaspora, and Love,\u201d from\u00a0Islamic Masculinities<\/em>\u00a0(2006).<\/li>\n
                  • In Class:\u00a0<\/em>Video art, Sharif Wakad, \u201cTo Be Continued\u2026\u201d; Ronen Eidelman,\u00a0The Ghost of Manshia<\/em><\/li>\n
                  • Optional:<\/em>\u00a0Anna Ball, \u201cCommuning with Darwish\u2019s Ghosts: Absent Presence in Dialogue with the Palestinian Moving Image,\u201d\u00a0Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication<\/em>, 7:2, (2014): 135 \u2013 151.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                    Week 8: Personal Ghosts\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                      \n
                    • Radwa Ashour,\u00a0Specters<\/em>\u00a0(Egypt, 1992, 200pg).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                      Week 9: Hauntings \u2013 Horror and Rewritings\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                        \n
                      • Ahmed Saadawi,\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad<\/em>\u00a0(Iraq, 2013, 280pp.).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                        Week 10: Horror Continued (Mar 20; 22)<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                          \n
                        • (Saadawi continued)<\/li>\n
                        • Babak Anvari,\u00a0Under the Shadows<\/em>\u00a0(film, Tehran 2016).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                          Week 11: Jinn of the Cyber World\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

                            \n
                          • G Willow Wilson,\u00a0<\/i>Alif the Unseen<\/em>\u00a0(Fantasy\/Cyber punk, US\/Cairo, 2012, 400pg).<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                            \"\"Shir Alon got her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA, where she also taught classes on \u201cOrientalism in Hebrew Literature\u201d and \u201cNomadism and Migration in Middle Eastern Literatures.\u201d She is currently a\u00a0Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow in Arabic Literature at Washington and Lee University. Her research focuses on modern Arabic and Hebrew literatures,\u00a0legacies of Orientalism,\u00a0transnational modernisms,\u00a0and affect theory.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

                            <\/div>\n
                            \n
                            \n
                            \n
                            \n
                            <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
                            \n
                            <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
                            <\/div>\n
                            <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
                            <\/div>\n
                            \n
                            <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                            Via Arab Literature (In English) & BY MLYNXQUALEY on APRIL 2, 2018 \u2022 ( 0\u00a0) ArabLit\u2019s ongoing series on\u00a0Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation\u00a0continues with a conversation between ArabLit\u2019s editor and Shir Alon, Mellon...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,64,1442],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-literature","category-mashreq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15989,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988\/revisions\/15989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}