How does a generation without personal memory begin to grapple with its urban past in a nation that has silenced its memories? How are symbolic sites of memory recovered and represented by such a generation? Much recent scholarship on post-war Lebanon has studied the memory culture of the decades following the declared end of civil war. This…[Read more]

In this essay I argue that paying attention to the ephemeral genre of female sensation stories sheds insight on, and expands current understandings of, the many ways in which cultural production operated in the Arabic-speaking world during the nahḍa. Paying particular attention to two short stories in the genre, Adelaide Bustānī’s ‘Henry wa Ameli…[Read more]

In this essay, I explore the ways in which the bodies of migrants, specifically of Lebanese men who have returned from Africa, are represented in Lebanese fiction. By focusing on the ways in which these figures are embodied textually, I seek to begin to shed light on the ways in which Lebanese authors have engaged with certain diaspora spaces, in…[Read more]

Survey of literature about Beirut, 1860s-present

Global South/Global North Comparatism:
The Case of the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean

Hala Halim

The text below is the abstract of a presentation given by Hala Halim, New York University, on the Presidential Panel at the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on July 8, 2017.

An…[Read more]

This article traces the social and cultural circumstances of nineteenth-century c lations and translations of Alf Laylah wa Laylah into English, Arabic, or Per particular to gauge what cultural value these modem editions were thought t for their readerships. Through an examination of the critical discourse aroun text, it can be shown how the…[Read more]

Our understanding of nineteenth-century literary practice is often mediated by the national literature model of study that continues to govern discussions of modern literature. Put differently, contemporary evaluations of literary texts of the nineteenth century are often arrived at by using the national literature models that remain ascendant.…[Read more]