‘Translating’ Orality and Sociability into Print

The Beirut-based women’s magazine al-Mar’a al-Jadida (The new woman, 1921–1927), edited by Julia Tu‘ma Dimashqiyya, regularly published articles that reported on cultural events, summarizing and quoting from speeches and poems delivered during the meetings of Jami‘at al-Sayyidat (the Women’s League) or in other forums. In this paper I examine how these forms of orality and sociability were ‘translated’ into print, and for what purpose. While journals of the Nahda period (late nineteenth/early twentieth century) are usually considered primarily educational media and forums for controversial debates, I argue, based on an analysis of selected articles from al-Mar’a al-Jadida, that these texts strongly express the aim of the journal editor and the contributors to build a community of shared values. Inspired by research in media studies that speaks against both media determinism and notions of media purity, in this paper I look at the interplay between the journal and more ephemeral forms of communication. Drawing on recent trends in periodical research that project journals as more than mere vessels for texts and other content, I examine al-Mar’a al-Jadida as a form and a media actor in its own right.