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Pedagogy
New Texts Out Now: Jens Hanssen, Kafka and Arabs
Jens Hanssen, “Kafka and Arabs.” Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2012). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Jens Hanssen (JH): I have been carrying a dog-eared photocopy of Kafka’s three-page animal story “Schakale und Araber” in my luggage ever since a friend of mine at the German Institute in Beirut handed it to me to read. This was back in 1998, and I remember that when I read it I knew I would return to it one day. I think for anyone concerned about the tragedy of Palestine, Kafka’s story resonates. It is certainly not straightforward and at the time I did not fully know what it meant or ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Linda Herrera, Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt
Linda Herrera, “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.” Harvard Educational Review (Fall 2012). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Linda Herrera (LH): Schools once served as temples of citizenship education, but this is no longer the case. I came to the realization of the diminished role of schooling in the lives of young Egyptians during a visit to a public high school in 2006. I arrived at a school in the Delta in the middle of the day to interview teachers about curriculum reforms. What I found was a school populated by the teaching and administrative staff but without students! It turned out that with end of year exams ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Rikke Hostrup Haugbolle and Francesco Cavatorta, Beyond Ghannouchi: Social Changes and Islamism in Tunisia
Rikke Hostrup Haugbølle and Francesco Cavatorta, "Beyond Ghannouchi: Social Changes and Islamism in Tunisia," Middle East Report 262 (Spring 2012). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Rikke Hostrup Haugbølle and Francesco Cavatorta (RHH and FC): In October 2011, Tunisia had the first elections after the uprising that had led Ben Ali to flee the country. The months prior to the elections were very confusing and no one really knew whether elections would take place at all. At the same time, it was a very exciting period for the country and those like us who had been working on it. New parties were emerging, and the Islamist Ennahda, whose leaders ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, Libya, Social Origins of Dictatorship, and the Challenge for Democracy
Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, "Libya, Social Origins of Dictatorship, and the Challenge for Democracy." North African Revolutions, special issue of The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 3.1 (2012) Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Ali Ahmida (AA): This article was inspired by the democratic revolutionary uprising in the Arab World, especially Libya, the least known country. Also, I wanted to go beyond the orientalist and the colonial filtering and categories by bringing in the historical, comparative, and post-colonial context. For example, Libya’s colonial genocide under Italian Fascism is often ignored and is viewed through the category of ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret, and Eric Denis, Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East
Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret and Eric Denis, editors. Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East: Case Studies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Myriam Ababsa (MA), Baudouin Dupret (BD), and Eric Denis (ED): The first impulse behind this book came out of Eric Denis’ and Baudouin Dupret’s collaboration during the nineties at the French Institute in Cairo (CEDEJ), when the former conducted major research on urbanization and the latter on legal practice. When Dupret moved to Damascus, he was granted some funding from a research ...
Keep Reading »What a Seven Day Teachers' Strike Can Accomplish: Key Contract Issues
![[Demonstrators as part of the Chicago Teachers Union strike on 10 September 2012. Image by Sierraromeo via Flickr.]](/content_images/3/sm_TCUPIC.jpg "[Demonstrators as part of the Chicago Teachers Union strike on 10 September 2012. Image by Sierraromeo via Flickr.]")
On 10 September 2012, approximately twenty-nine thousand members of the Chicago Teachers Union began a seven-day strike protesting a host of encroachments on their rights as workers and educators on the part of the Chicago Board of Education. While various news reports have detailed the final contract agreement, the chart below (published by the Chicago Tribune on 18 September) highlights the issues that were on the table and the movement in the board's positions that were achieved through the strike and attendant negotiations. Certainly, there remains much to be analyzed regarding the conditions that made such a success possible and the issues that continue to be ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Julie Carlson and Elisabeth Weber, Speaking about Torture
Julie Carlson and Elisabeth Weber, editors. Speaking about Torture. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you put together this collection? Julie Carlson (JC) and Elisabeth Weber (EW): This is the first book to take up the issue of torture from the array of approaches offered by the arts and humanities. In the post 9/11 era, our volume seeks to challenge the surprisingly widespread acceptance of state-sanctioned torture among Americans, including academics and the media entertainment complex. Speaking about Torture claims that the concepts and techniques practiced in the humanities have a special contribution to make to this debate, going ...
Keep Reading »When the Lights Go Out: A Discussion with David Theo Goldberg
![[David Theo Goldberg. Image via the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_DTG.jpg "[David Theo Goldberg. Image via the author.]")
David Theo Goldberg is the Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the world’s leading figures in Critical Race Theory. Ten years ago he started SECT (the summer Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory). From 29 July - 9 August, the eighth session of SECT was held in Beirut, Lebanon on the theme of “Spaces of Resistance.” What follows is a conversation I conducted with David Theo Goldberg during the Seminar, intercut with my reflections as a participant in SECT VIII. Ten days discussing critical theory were punctuated by a series of moments when the lights went out. Of ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance
Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Jason Brownlee (JB): I had a series of experiences in 2009 that got me thinking about the intersection of US foreign policy and human rights abuses in Egypt. First, I was in Egypt in January 2009, during the massive protests against Operation Cast Lead (Israel's military assault on the Gaza Strip, which ended just before Obama took office). The demonstrations eclipsed in size anything organized by Kefaya (the Egyptian Movement for Change) and other political reform movements during prior ...
Keep Reading »Exile and Memory in Contemporary Western Armenian Literature
A thick stack of black and white photographs flutters to the floor. A man stands over the jumbled pile and, looking past bent corners and nibbled edges, sees dozens of faces staring up at him. These faces are vaguely familiar—an old neighbor, a distant cousin, an aunt who used to spend summers with him. Some photos land face down and, from his height, the man can just make out the names and dates scribbled in purple ink across the backs. He kneels down and, with the tips of his fingers, quickly rakes the photographs into a haphazard mound. He leans over it to inspect the faces more closely and immediately a voice begins whispering in his ear. Memories begin to flood the ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Khaled Furani, Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry
Khaled Furani, Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Khaled Furani (KF): Growing up in thrall to Israeli policies aimed at diluting and obliterating the Palestine that was, I saw in Arabic poetry “what remains,” to quote from Hannah Arendt’s reminiscences of the Germany she once knew (reverberating in Ghassan Kanafani’s novella and Walid Khalidi’s compendium). In the Arab world, poetry has played the kind of role that perhaps blues and jazz have held in black history in the United States: a record of resilience in rhythms. I wanted to write a book that ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Akram Khater, Embracing the Divine: Gender, Passion, and Politics in the Christian Middle East
Akram Fouad Khater, Embracing the Divine: Gender, Passion, and Politics in the Christian Middle East. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Akram Khater (AK): This book was partly a happenstance, and came partly out of a keen awareness of a gaping hole in Middle Eastern scholarship. The happenstance is common enough in scholarly research. Tired of the texts I was reading at the Bibliotheque Nationale for my PhD dissertation, I turned to the Arabic card catalog to browse for interesting manuscripts. I stumbled upon one titled Aghrab imra’a fil ‘alam [The Strangest Woman in the World]. With such an unabashedly over the ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Norman Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much
Norman G. Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End. New York: OR Books, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Norman Finkelstein (NF): I have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the past three decades. I first got involved on 6 June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. Although I was almost never allowed to teach the Israel-Palestine conflict (I mostly taught political theory), my research and publications have focused on it. ...
Keep Reading »NEWTON Year in Review
Since we first launched our New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) page a little more than a year ago, we have had the opportunity to feature an astonishing range of books and articles for Jadaliyya readers. With authors generously agreeing to discuss their new works, offer background information on their research, and allow us to post excerpts from their books and articles, we have been able to offer first looks at some of the most important new work in the field, from established names and rising stars ...
Keep Reading »Jadaliyya's First Book is Now Available from Pluto Press
Jadaliyya Co-Editors are excited to announce the release of The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of An Old Order?, published by Pluto Press. This book is the first publication produced by the Arab Studies Institute, co-edited by Jadaliyya Editors, and featuring Jadaliyya contributors. The volume is currently available in paperback and Kindle format at these and other locations: In the US: Macmillan and Amazon US In the UK: Pluto Press and Amazon UK ...
Keep Reading »Turkish Fragments
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence. Translated by Maureen Freely. New York: Knopf, 2009. Nurdan Gürbilek, The New Cultural Climate in Turkey: Living in a Shop Window. Translated by Victoria Holbrook. London: Zed Books, 2011. The year 2009 brought us an English translation of the Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence; the year 2011, a translation of Nurdan Gürbilek’s The New Cultural Climate in Turkey: Living in a Shop Window. Gürbilek is an equally prominent figure in Turkey, ...
Keep Reading »Inaugural Issue of Journal on Postcolonial Directions in Education
Postcolonial Directions in Education is a peer-reviewed open access journal produced twice a year. It is a scholarly journal intended to foster further understanding, advancement and reshaping of the field of postcolonial education. We welcome articles that contriute to advancing the field. As indicated in the editorial for the inaugural issue, the purview of this journal is broad enough to encompass a variety of disciplinary approaches, including but not confined to the following: sociological, ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia
Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Steffen Hertog (SH): The original idea behind the research project was to analyze how liberalizing economic reforms were changing the social and political structures of an oil-rich (or “rentier”) state like Saudi Arabia. That was the plan before I did my fieldwork, but my experience there pretty much turned the whole thing on its ...
Keep Reading »Grappling with Israel: From Sontag to Lacan and the Maoists in Between
Susan Sontag, Promised Lands. Poland/France, 1974. Groupe Cinéma Vincennes, L’Olivier. France/Palestine, 1976. Mike Hoolboom, Lacan Palestine. Canada, 2012. In 1973, Susan Sontag, the visual critic and essayist, traveled to the Middle East to film in Israel, just before the end of the October War that saw Egypt and Syria uniting to launch a surprise attack in retaliation for the colossal losses of the 1967 war. To watch Susan Sontag's Promised Lands in April 2012 as part of the London Palestine Film ...
Keep Reading »NEWTONs You Might Have Missed
With a new semester on the horizon, NEWTON is about to kick into high gear once again. Below are a few amazing posts that you might have missed the first time around. If you wish to recommend a book to be reviewed or if you have just published a book or a peer-reviewed article, please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com Mohamed Daadaoui, Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzen Power Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture Belén ...
Keep Reading »Aesthetic Politics: Iranian Performance and the Challenge of Modernity
Amir Baradaran, Marry Me to the End of Love. Cite internationale des Artes, Paris, France, 23-30 June 2012. Curated by Feri Daftari. Not often is a performance as variegated in its political significance or as generous to critical exposition as Amir Baradaran's recent interactive piece, Marry Me to the End of Love. Inserting itself into current debates surrounding the politics of marriage and Islam in relation to Western modernity, as well as the origin and viability of ...
Keep Reading »Cinematic Occupation
Kamal Aljafari, Port of Memory. France/Germany/UAE/Palestine, 2009. In the state of siege, time becomes place Fossilized in its eternity In the state of siege, place becomes time Lagging behind its yesterday and its tomorrow —Mahmoud Darwish, “State of Siege” Kamal Aljafari’s film Port of Memory (2009) opens with a long tracking shot of a grand, decaying house at twilight. The camera lingers on the skin of this structure that bears traces of other times and previous inhabitations. The footage feels ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: James Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know
James Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): How did you come to write this book? James Gelvin (JG): In the winter of 2011, I made contact with Oxford University Press about doing a condensed, “trade” (i.e., mass market) version of my The Modern Middle East: A History. I thought this would be useful because, among other things, the book lays out the historical background for the Arab uprisings we were witnessing. The ...
Keep Reading »Artist Call: NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond (New York, 16 July Deadline)
Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 | p. 718.230.0492 | f. 718.230.0246 Important Dates: July 16, 2012: Submission deadline August 1, 2012: Artists announced via e-mail and web Exhibition Dates: October, 2012 – January, 2013 Exhibition Theme Be it in New York, Paris, or Bamako, the world is experiencing a paradigm shift that began in Africa. Worldwide, members of the financial and racial majority are no longer satisfied with matriculating into a ...
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