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From social and national struggle in Mandate Palestine to combatting fascism in Spain: Yassin’s ʿAlī, Qissat Rajul Mustaqīm (2017) Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-09-03 Nevine Abraham
This article examines Hussein Yassin’s novel (b. 1943-), Alī: Qissat Rajul Mustaqīm (2017), (ʿAlī: The Story of an Honorable Man), the first historical fiction which treats the real story of ʿAlī ʿ...
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Ways of being Palestinian: autobiography as critical emplotment in the work of Fawaz Turki Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-09-01 Christopher Iacovetti
Autobiography has become an increasingly prominent form of Palestinian literature since the 1980s, giving rise to scholarly discussions about how best to read, interpret, and analyze Palestinian li...
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Making room in the premodern Persian poetic canon for Mahsatī and Rābʿiah Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Sunil Sharma
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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A Distinct Flânerie: Roleplaying and Affective Responses to the City in Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s Miskinler Tekkesi Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-08-27 Merve Atasoy
A significant response to the urban experience of Istanbul in the early decades of Republican Turkish literature (1923–1950s), is the expression of pride for the past. Pride, during this era of cha...
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“To dance like Solomon: imitation and martyrdom in a Qajar ghazal” Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-08-15 Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
Iran’s neoclassical Literary Return movement (Bāzgasht-i adabī) that reached its climax in the first half of the nineteenth century has, to date, been studied almost exclusively in relation to the ...
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On the margins of Beirut’s cultural modernism: aesthetics and politics in the inter-artistic works of Laure Ghorayeb Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 Dima Nasser
Known for her black-and-white miniatures embedded with Arabic writing, Laure Ghorayeb is a fascinating if understudied figure of Beirut’s cultural modernism. Her work occupied a liminal position be...
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Persian Narrative Poetry in the Classical Era, 800–1500. Romantic and Didactic Genres, edited by Mohsen Ashtiany, A History of Persian Literature III Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Anna Livia Beelaert
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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The concept of a house/home in the poetry of the Nineties Poets – Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt by Īmān Mirsāl as a model Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-07-21 Rawand Sliman-Baraky
The article presents readings of two poems by Īmān Mirsāl, “Jaras al-ṣabāḥ” (Morning Bell) and “Fikrat al-buyūt” (The Idea of Houses), from her collection Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt (Until...
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Dedication Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-06-28
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 2, 2023)
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The classical discovery of modern (book) history Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-06-28 Adam Mestyan
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Sadeq Hedayat’s vegetarianism: a few notes on the representation of vegetarianism, animals and animal rights in Sadeq Hedayat’s Favāʾid-i giyāhkhārī (The benefits of vegetarianism) and Insān-u ḥayvān (Human and animal) Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Gabrielle van den Berg
Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) is an Iranian author known for his short stories and his novel Būf-i Kūr (The Blind Owl). An intellectual from an influential family, Hedayat traveled abroad at a young ag...
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Fragile ecologies Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-06-12 Charis Olszok
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
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Arabic posthuman: bee, beehive and beekeeper in a reconceptualizing of the human Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-06-12 Wen-chin Ouyang
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
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“Literature in a time of contagion” by Elias Khoury Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Samuel Martin
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
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The modern arabic bible: translation, dissemination, and literary impact Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Hannah Scott Deuchar
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 2, 2023)
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Neoliberal contradictions, necrocapitalist nightmares: questions of human agency and free will in Aḥmad Saʿdāwī’s Frankenstein in Baghdad Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Jamil Khader
This article argues that the major fantastic conceit, the Whatsitname (the shisma), in Ahmad Sa'dāwī's novel, Frankenstein in Baghdad, functions as an allegory for the repressed totality of necroca...
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Mapping exile: post-Arab Spring revolutionaries’ diasporic voices in Serag Mounir’s Diaspora Spring Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Khaled Mostafa Karam, Hamdy Ebeid Khalil, Mahmoud El Bagoury
Serag Mounir’s Diaspora Spring (Rabīʿ al-shatāt, 2019) scrutinizes the critical effects of the Arab Spring on Arab youth, offering a multilayered portrayal of the present Middle East and its revolu...
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On the animating affect of ṭarab and its (un)translatability Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-02-09 Dina A. Mahmoud
This article explores the (un)translatability of ṭarab—typically understood as feeling ecstasy in response to poetic and musical performances—in the recitation of Arabic poems and their translation...
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Subjectivity, agency, and the question of gender in Fadwa Tuqan’s post-naksa poetry Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Linda Istanbulli
After the naksa, Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan composed her famous “I Shall Not Weep,” which she later included in her first resistance-themed collection: The Night and Knights. In this poem, Tuqan ...
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“In the dead of night, a cry” by Ata Nahai Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Translated by Zakarya Bezdoode
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 2, 2023)
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Counter creaturely communities in Emily Nasrallah’s Yawmīyyāt Hirr and Hoda Barakat’s Barīd al-Layl Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Yasmine Khayyat
This article examines the possibilities as well as the limits of creaturely solidarity in Lebanese novelist Emily Nasrallah's (d. 2018) young adult novel Yawmīyyāt Hirr (A Cat's Diary), first publi...
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War remains: ruination and resistance in Lebanon Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Ghenwa Hayek
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 2, 2023)
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Exhausting aesthetic critiques of the authoritarian present in Egyptian literature from Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm to Muḥammad Rabīʿ Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Brady Patrick Ryan
In this article, I outline a trajectory of aesthetic critique of the authoritarian present in Egypt from Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm’s novellas Tilka al-rāʾiḥa and 67 to Muḥammad Rabīʿ’s ʿUṭārid, from the di...
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Climate change and the future of the city: Arabic science fiction as climate fiction in Egypt and Iraq Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Teresa Pepe
This article analyses the representation of the climate crisis and urban imaginaries in post-2011 Arabic science fiction (SF), arguing that Arabic SF, and its cross-genre of critical dystopian fict...
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In search of the “voice of the people”: Mahmoud Darwish’s third-worldist genres Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Maru Pabón
In the years following the Bandung Conference of 1955, poetry that captured the “voice of the people” became a strategy of the project of Third-Worldism. Mahmoud Darwish (b. 1941, Birwah, d. 2008, ...
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Hackneyed phrases: lingual migrations in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Adnan Mahmutović
Tayeb Salih’s world-literary classic Mawsim al-hijra ilā al-shimāl (1966) has served World Literature as the preeminent text of postcolonialism, touching on issues of identity, nationality, culture...
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What do Keloğlan stories say about masculine anxieties and reclaiming masculinity? Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Seda Demiralp
Keloğlan stories deliver an anti-patriarchal message. The stories interpreted in this article narrate the male ego’s journey of individuation through an engagement with repressed psychic content, p...
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Reorienting modernism in Arabic and Persian poetry Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Marlé Hammond
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 25, No. 2-3, 2022)
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Between literature and history: receptions of poetry in ancient Egypt Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-16 Margaret Geoga
This article explores literary reception in ancient Egypt, focusing on the enigmatic poem The Teaching of Amenemhat, ca. 1550–500 BCE. Combining material philology, textual criticism, and reception...
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Culture outside of the state: aesthetics and education in the works of Salama Musa, Taha Husayn, and Ramsis Yunan Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Maya Kesrouany
This article analyses Egyptian definitions of thaqāfa or “culture” from 1922 to 1954 by focusing on three intellectuals: Salama Musa (1887–1958), Taha Husayn (1889–1973), and Ramsis Yunan (1913–196...
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Lebanon in the Devil’s Waters: the literary supernatural in Ghada al-Samman’s civil war trilogy Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Renée Ragin Randall
In the early 1970s, Syrian-born author, Ghada al-Samman authored two essays on the supernatural based, in part, on her experiences in Beirut. These essays mark the beginning of what I identify as h...
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Iridescent Kuwait: Petro-modernity and urban visual culture in the mid-twentieth century Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-17 Kylie Walters
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
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Once upon a time in the anthropocene: myths, legends, and futurity in Turkish climate fiction Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Merve Tabur
Myths and legends in climate fiction are often studied with reference to fantasy and magical realism; yet the relationship between the two forms remains understudied. This article examines the use ...
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Garbage, corruption, and political protest in Lebanese literature and film Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Maya Aghasi
This article explores the representation of garbage in Lebanese literature and film, focusing on the children’s book, Picture Perfect (2021), by Najla El Khatib (b. 1987) and two films by director ...
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“Was he Ramzi?” A short story by Samira Azzam Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Ranya Abdelrahman (Introduction), Ferial B. Khalifa (Translation)
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 25, No. 1, 2022)
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A Dove in Free Flight Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-04-14 Alexa Firat
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 25, No. 2-3, 2022)
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The problem with hybridity: a critique of Armeno-Turkish studies Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-04-11 Aram Ghoogasian
ABSTRACT The study of Armeno-Turkish Literature, or Turkish written in Armenian script, has boomed of late, posing a challenge to Turkish literary historiography's neglect of Armeno-Turkish texts. Though this scholarship has argued against the exclusion of Armenians from late Ottoman cultural history, it has also unintentionally reproduced the nationalist, exclusionary logic that such segregation rested
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Palestine’s YA fiction and identity in Ahlam Bsharat’s Code Name: Butterfly Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Aida Fahmawi Watad
ABSTRACT The article addresses a relatively neglected area of research: Palestinian literature for adolescents, adab al-yāfiʿīn [literature for adolescents] or Young Adult (YA) literature. It sheds light on how this literature addresses the unique problematics of growing up under occupation and considers how novels for young adults reflect the Palestinian teenager's consolidation of his or her identity
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Threading the racial capitalocene: on the poetics of affective porosity in Ibrahim al-Koni's Bleeding of the Stone (Nazīf al-ḥajar) and Yoel Hoffmann's Book of Joseph (Sefer Yosef) Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-21 Rachel Green
Excavating traces of the Racial Capitalocene in Libyan-Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni's Arabic language Bleeding of the Stone (1990) and Israeli Jewish author Yoel Hoffmann's Hebrew-language Book of...
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Dream interpretation and parodies of translation in Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Phoebe Bay Carter
ABSTRACT In Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s 1855 semiautobiographical picaresque al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq (Leg Over Leg), the author’s double, the Fāriyāq, holds a series of jobs that parodically stand in for al-Shidyāq’s own employments. This article addresses the Fāriyāq’s career as an oneiromancer, reading it as an allegory of al-Shidyāq’s work as a Bible translator for European Protestant missionaries. By representing
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In memoriam: Franklin Lewis (1961-2022) Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-24
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021)
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Kamāl al-Dīn Banāʾī’s Bahrām va Bihrūz: A Persian romance qua mirror for princes in light of Aq Qoyunlu history Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Chad G. Lingwood
ABSTRACT This article proposes that Bāgh-i iram, a Persian masnavī by Kamāl al-Dīn Shīr-ʿAlī Banāʾī, the narrative of which presents a love triangle involving brother-dynasts—hence its alternative title, Bahrām va Bihrūz—is a work of moral and ethical advice. The study posits that Banāʾī composed Bahrām va Bihrūz, which survives only in manuscript form, to honor his deceased patron, Yaʿqūb b. Ūzūn
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Experimentation and the absurd in two plays by Syrian playwright Walīd Ikhlāṣī Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Basilius Bawardi, Reem Ghanayem
ABSTRACT Walīd Ikhlāṣī (1935–2022) is a modernist Syrian playwright who was part of a broader Arab movement experimenting with the theatre of the absurd. His experimental writings are based on a fundamental refusal to accept ready-made values – literary, cultural, or philosophical. In this experimentation he developed a truly unique style, set apart from his contemporaries. Examining two one-act plays:
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“Pantomime”: A short story by Sami Paşazade Sezai Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Translated by Ici Vanwesenbeeck
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021)
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Modern nihilism and Naguib Mahfouz’s faith in liberalism Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-12-01 Ken Seigneurie
ABSTRACT By mid-twentieth century, liberal thought was in crisis. Its victory over fascism ill concealed the empty promise at the heart of liberalism, that freedom defined as an absence of compulsion could substitute for a sense of human purpose. Non-western writers saw this as clearly as Camus, Arendt, Niebuhr, and Marcuse did. This essay regards Naguib Mahfouz’s 1965 novel, The Beggar, as a bid to
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Revolutions aesthetic: a cultural history of Ba'thist Syria Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-11-07 Molly Courtney
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 25, No. 1, 2022)
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The translator of desires Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-11-04 Kevin Blankinship
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021)
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The Tent Generation: Palestinian Poems Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-10-25 Tayseer Abu Odeh
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021)
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Richard van Leeuwen. The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction: Intertextual Readings; and Muhsin J. al-Musawi. The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-10-18 Wen-chin Ouyang
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 25, No. 1, 2022)
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Arabic exile literature in Europe. Defamiliarising forced migration Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Annamaria Bianco
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021)
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Is the Arab nahḍah really Arabic? Literary translingualisms in the nahḍah's contact zones Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-09-13 Alaaeldin Mahmoud
ABSTRACT Against the perception of the nahḍah’s literati in Egypt and the Arab mashriq as being narrowly monolingual, due to their literary use of fuṣḥā Arabic and the various ʿāmmiyyahs, this article highlights literary translingual practices in the nahḍah’s contact zones in Egypt, Syro-Lebanon, and Iraq. Literary translingualisms took various forms such as bi-or-translingual azjāl (“vernacular verse”)
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Muḥammad al-Māghūṭ’s rhetoric of sincerity: a major voice in modern Arabic poetry Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-08-15 Daniel Behar
ABSTRACT This article highlights the poetics of Syrian poet Muḥammad al-Māghūt ̣(1934-2006) as forging a poetic identity enacted as a series of performative contradictions between the empirical and the poetic selves in what amounts to a discourse of “rhetorical sincerity.” This poetic discourse employs a variety of devices to communicate that the irreducibility of Arab life can be contained neither
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Poetry, satire, and self in the post-constitutional Iranian-Jewish periodical Ha-Hayyim Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-06-27 Daniel Amir
ABSTRACT The Iranian-Jewish newspaper Ha-Hayyim represented a high point of Jewish engagement with the wider public sphere in the late Qajar period. Its modernizing agenda saw it and its editor Shemuel Hayyim become subjects of controversy as Jews debated their political future in Iran. This article examines four poems featured in Ha-Hayyim as a means of illuminating a period of Jewish literary creativity
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Beyond the land of Palestine: deserts, shores, seas Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Joseph R. Farag
ABSTRACT How the land of Palestine is imagined goes to the heart of Palestinian identity, making the process a significant and fraught endeavor. However, while the centrality of land to the imagined geography of Palestine has long been acknowledged, less attention has been paid to Palestine’s sea. This paper therefore explores how the canonical Palestinian authors, Ghassan Kanafani and Jabra Ibrahim
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Syrian poetry in exile: the case of Wafai Laila Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-05-10 Jonas Elbousty
ABSTRACT The social, economic, ecological, political, and religious hardships have forced many Syrian intellectuals to search for a safe haven. These struggles, both in their country of origin and host lands, have inspired many poets to explore topics documenting their trauma and loss. The majority of cultural production that has been produced since 2011 discusses themes, such as alienation, displacement
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Hafiz and his contemporaries: poetry, performance and patronage in fourteenth-century Iran Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Domenico Ingenito
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 2, 2021)
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Beholding beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the aesthetics of desire in medieval Persian poetry Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Jonathan Lawrence
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures (Vol. 24, No. 2, 2021)
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Co-editors’ introduction Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-03-21 Huda Fakhreddine, Charis Olszok, Nora Parr, Adam Talib
(2021). Co-editors’ introduction. Middle Eastern Literatures: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 1-2.
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A Poem by an-Nābighah adh-Dhubyānī Translated by Robin Moger Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-03-21
(2021). A Poem by an-Nābighah adh-Dhubyānī Translated by Robin Moger. Middle Eastern Literatures: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 60-71.
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In memoriam Middle Eastern Literatures (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-03-21
(2021). In memoriam. Middle Eastern Literatures: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 72-77.