{"title":"Climate change and the future of the city: Arabic science fiction as climate fiction in Egypt and Iraq","authors":"Teresa Pepe","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2023.2252774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2023.2252774","url":null,"abstract":"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 fiction, intersects with global climate fiction (cli-fi), while maintaining a horizon for hope. It compares two graphic novels written by authors of Egyptian origins, Aḥmad Nājī's Istikhdām al-Ḥayāt (2014; Using Life, 2017) and Ganzeer's English-language The Solar Grid (2016-2020), with two short stories authored by Iraq-born authors, “al-Mutakallim” (“The Worker”) by Ḍiyāʾ Jubaylī; and “Ḥadāʾīq Bābil” (“Gardens of Babylon”) by Ḥasan Blāsim, included in the collection al-ʿIrāq + 100 (2017; Iraq +100, 2016). Through the four works, future apocalyptic urban scenarios are imagined, linked to climate change, city mega-projects, and oil scarcity. Illuminating the unseen violence perpetrated by colonial forces and ruling elites, these visions prefigure the global reach of the climate catastrophe and contribute to understandings of Nixon's “slow violence” and Heise's “eco-cosmopolitanism”.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What do Keloğlan stories say about masculine anxieties and reclaiming masculinity?","authors":"Seda Demiralp","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2023.2252251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2023.2252251","url":null,"abstract":"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...","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"34 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Garbage, corruption, and political protest in Lebanese literature and film","authors":"Maya Aghasi","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2023.2194014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2023.2194014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89640946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"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)","authors":"R. Green","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2023.2179388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2023.2179388","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78581891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lebanon in the Devil’s Waters: the literary supernatural in Ghada al-Samman’s civil war trilogy","authors":"Renée Ragin Randall","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2023.2242294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2023.2242294","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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 her sustained literary interest in the supernatural. While al-Samman’s political investments as a feminist and leftist writer have been the primary lenses through which critics have considered her work, this essay recenters her literary contributions. Focusing on her Lebanese civil war trilogy, I explore how she constructs and sustains a supernatural literary sensibility over the course of several decades, amalgamating Arabo-Islamic cosmologies, Euro-American psychoanalytic notions, and Shakespearean aesthetics. The result, I argue, is a supernatural hermeneutic which highlights the irreparable damage of both pre-war and wartime environs to the individual soul and the body politic.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"10 1","pages":"150 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79971933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Culture outside of the state: aesthetics and education in the works of Salama Musa, Taha Husayn, and Ramsis Yunan","authors":"M. Kesrouany","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2023.2243841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2023.2243841","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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 (1913–1966). It considers how their definitions complicated the European integration of the term into the Arabic language, and how they contrasted with other relevant terms such as tarbiya (moral education) and taʿlīm (institutional instruction). Examining the cultural idioms embedded in these definitions challenges a typography that assumes a radical break between Arab intellectuals before and after the 1950s. By examining how the adaptation of socialist thought nuanced these appropriations, the article shows how the three intellectuals propose a definition of thaqāfa that borrows from transnational aesthetics to produce localized formulations of socialist realism and surrealism and advocate for a local humanism that works to keep literature and the arts outside of state control while educating people to resist fascist movements.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"28 1","pages":"113 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76925030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between literature and history: receptions of poetry in ancient Egypt","authors":"Margaret Geoga","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2023.2241196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2023.2241196","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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 theory, the article investigates how the poem’s readers interpreted it by examining the contexts in which manuscripts were read, the textual interventions copyists made, and the cultural currents that shaped readers’ expectations. The article introduces Amenemhat, before discussing several individual readers and their encounters with the poem. Next, based on textual analysis of the surviving manuscripts, the article identifies interpretive trends occurring over time. The article then contextualizes the poem’s reception within scribal culture. A final section discusses the innovative reception of Amenemhat by the Nubian king Taharqo. The article aims to bridge the gap between Egyptology and literary studies by using ancient Egyptian literature to explore new approaches to reception history and by introducing this understudied poem to a wider audience.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"66 1","pages":"69 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87430900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reorienting modernism in Arabic and Persian poetry","authors":"Marlé Hammond","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2255482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2255482","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"1 1","pages":"189 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82946272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}