Arabic and World Literature: Comparative and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

‘Power... dictates its law to sex’: The Permeability of Sexual Relations Boundaries in Medieval Iberia

2024-08-25T10:27:07+02:00

This dissertation aims at showing how power- under its many forms- allowed for the permeability of sexual relations boundaries in Medieval Iberia. After a brief outline on the legal code of the three Abrahamic religions, the first section will explore the connection between gender, group membership and power, and will look at what I would define ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ forms of privilege within mechanisms of social tolerance. The second section will focus on power meant as political authority and financial resources, and on how this allowed individuals to escape punishment and obtain tolerance. My investigation explores the extent to which power allowed for interfaith sexual activity in Medieval Iberia, rendering what appears (juridically) as one of the most impermeable boundaries, de facto, extremely permeable.

الموضة وأنموذج المرأة المصرية الحديثة

2024-08-25T10:28:56+02:00

تعتمد هذه الدراسة على نظرية الموضة وما بعد الاستعمار كمرجعين لتتبع وتحليل تأثير وسائل الإعلام وثقافة الاستهلاك في توجيه مواقف المرأة المصرية تجاه أسلوب اللباس والقيم العلمانية الغربية ضمن سياق خطاب التحديث النسوي في مصر مابعد الاستعمار.يسلط البحث الضوء في هذا السياق على مواقف نماذج نسايئة تجاه أساليب اللباس الغربية واشكالية دلالات ارتداء الحجاب في مصر مابعد الاستعمار.تجادل هذه الدراسة أن وسائل الإعلام البديل،وخاصةً منصات التواصل الاجتماعي، تلعب دورًا بارزًا في توجيه سلوكيات وآراء متنوعة تجاه أساليب اللباس وممارسات التدين في المجال العام و تُظهر هذه الآراء والسلوكيات المتنوعة إمكانية تشكيل مجتمع أكثر إيجابية وقدرة على التحدي أحياناً النظام العام في مجتمع طبقي بطابع بطرياركي من جهة ومن جهة أخرى، تخلص الدراسة إلى أن أنماط أزياء المرأة المسلمة المعاصرة والأنيقة قد تشكل خطابًا مضادًا لتمثيل الثقافة الإسلامية غير الغربية كثقافة ساكنة من جهة، وتوجه نقدًا لتعريف نظرية الموضة "الغربية" التي تفترض حداثة علمانية كونية مقصية تاريخ وخبرات ثقافات مجتمعات أخرى.

Ink for Impact: Literature as a Catalyst for Sustainable Development Education

2024-09-16T10:30:22+02:00

In an interconnected world, sustainable development has become a crucial focus across various disciplines, including education. Literature, as a powerful medium for storytelling and expression, provides a unique platform for exploring the multifaceted challenges faced by our global society. Integrating sustainable development concepts into literature courses has the potential to enrich the curriculum and enhance students’ understanding of pressing global issues such as climate change, social inequality, and environmental degradation. This article explored the intersection of literature and the United Nations Sustainable Goals by examining themes in literature relevant to sustainable development in works such as Maya Angelou’s poetry, Margaret Atwood’s short stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, and Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry. This study employed a mixed-methods research approach to investigate the impact of this interdisciplinary framework on students at the École Normale Supérieure, Moulay Ismail University of Meknes. The findings revealed that immersing students in narratives that reflect sustainable development themes fosters greater awareness, empathy, and motivation to engage with sustainable development goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4, which concerns quality education. Students are encouraged to think critically and reflect on their roles as global citizens by delving into stories illuminating these issues’ increasing complexities.

‘I tear my shirt up’ / ‘أمزق قميصي’/ ‘Yo me rompo mi camisa’: Songs on the Verge of Madness

2024-02-04T21:00:41+01:00

The long Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula left significant marks which still surface in unexpected forms. My research investigates points of convergence between the Arab Middle Ages and contemporary Western culture. In this paper, I explore the theme of madness across Medieval Arab texts and the world and lyrics of flamenco, with the aim of elucidating and further understanding possible convergences. I use a cross-disciplinary, rhizomatic epistemological model adapted from the concept coined by Deleuze and Guattari that embraces the heterogenous quality of cultural experience and the nonbinary nature of knowledge and considers cultural manifestations as ‘rhizomes’ that run beyond hierarchical, closed systems and one-directional single narratives, producing a multitude of connections in any direction and with ‘anything other’. This approach is particularly fruitful where philosophy and religion, science and aesthetics, psychology and politics, and the social and anthropological forms have complex multiplanar entanglements, as is the case in the present study. The image of tearing one’s shirt up from the title, common to medieval Arabic and contemporary Spanish flamenco cultures, alludes to paroxysm or mental derangement from overwhelming emotion or intense aesthetic experience (ṭarab) and is one example from my initial findings that will be discussed in this paper.