Recent Stories

Lebanon Still Overshadowed by Oblivion As Port Blast Aftermath Enters Fourth Year

Art has played an influential role in making sense of the loss felt after the August 4 explosion. Tom Young’s “Strong Angels” and other paintings show a human dimension of the tragedy and its civilian heroes, who “join forces to lift the city’s grief,” writes Darine Houmani of Diffah Three (The New Arab). “Despite all its devastation, the August 4 explosion brought greater impetus to preserve our heritage and brought about a database of our historical buildings that hadn’t been done before,” states Mona Hallak, an architect, heritage activist, and director of the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, as cited in The New Arab. Several weighed in on the rebuilding efforts, including Lebanese architect Jad Tabet, who proposed “rehabilitation” rather than “reconstruction,” focusing on preserving the city’s existing social fabric and inhabitants alongside the architecture (for further reading on Jad Tabet and architectural heritage, see Al Jadid, Vol. 4, No, 25, Fall 1998; Vol. 5, No. 26, Winter 1999; and Vol. 24, No. 79, 2020). As art historian and gallery owner Andrée Sfeir-Semler says, “You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls.”

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Our Current Issue

Tawfiq al-Hakim: Foretelling the Youth Revolution

By 
Nada Ramadan Elnahla

In the translator’s introduction, Radwan explains the importance of the timing of this publication, shedding light on this pioneering figure who predominantly contributed to Arabic literature through his novels, short stories, and plays. 

 
The Revolt of the Young: Essays by Tawfiq al-Hakim
Translated by Mona Radwan
Syracuse UP, 2015, 145 pp.
 
In 1984, Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898-1987) – a major literary and intellectual figure in Egypt and the Arab world who contributed to the development of Arabic literature – wrote “Thawrat al-Shabab” (“The Revolt of the Young”).

Women of the Revolutions: The New Faces of Arab Feminism

By 
Angele Ellis

“Nada’s Revolution” follows the tale of the 27-year Nada Ahmed, an Alexandrian woman looking to make decisions about marriage and career in the years after the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring. In “Feminism Inshallah: A History of Arab Feminism,” Feriel Ben Mahmoud, the film’s director, traces the beginnings of feminism to male feminists such as the Egyptian Qasim Amin (1863-1908), whose nationalist aspirations for Egypt fueled his assertion that the Quran supported women’s rights—essential to throwing off the yoke of colonialism and joining the modern world.

 

Feminism Inshallah: A History of Arab Feminism
Directed by Feriel Ben Mahmoud
Women Make Movies, 2014

Nada’s Revolution
Directed by Claudia Lisboa
Women Make Movies, 2014

 

Sin, Redemption, and Visions of Female Illness in Modern Arab Literature

By 
Bobby Gulshan

Hamdar’s examination of the female body in illness and suffering presents a compelling contribution to the body of literary criticism of Arabic Literature. She invokes strains of critical thought — like Foucault and the idea of discourse — using them to map the development of the image of the female body in recent Arabic literature. 

New Issue of Al Jadid

By 
Al Jadid

Al Jadid is just out (Vol. 19, No. 68). The cover (“Encoded History 1” 2015) by Doris Bittar. Al Jadid is a Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts (www.aljadid.com). As usual, the new issue is rich with essays and features, book, film and TV reviews, fiction, poetry, and a substantive editor's notebook.
ESSAYS AND FEATURES: ‘My Story With You is Different’ by Rima Assaf; ‘Sabah Zwein (1955-2014): An Innovative And Haunted Poet’ by Mike D’Andrea; 

Al Jadid is just out (Vol. 19, No. 68). The cover (“Encoded History 1” 2015) by Doris Bittar. Al Jadid is a Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts (www.aljadid.com).

‘The Jewish Quarter:’

Ramadan Drama Revisits 40’s Egyptian-Jewish Relations
By 
Elie Chalala

“The Jewish Quarter” has sent some unsettling messages about the “Ramadan series” (or soaps), prompting commentaries in the Arab press and beyond, and finally meriting a feature article in the New York Times. This 30 episode serial, which runs through the month of Ramadan in Egypt, offers a viewpoint unlike that featured in any other serial before or after the Arab Spring.

 

Al Nakba at 67: Generations of Catastrophes

By 
Elie Chalala

I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early days in Beirut and in my academic diaspora. Nowadays, I reserve my aggravation for those intellectual cowards who saw nothing in Al Nakba except a shelter to hide from their shameful silence on one of the most horrific “Nakbas” in modern Arab history.

I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early days in Beirut and in my academic diaspora. Nowadays, I reserve my aggravation for those intellectual cowards who saw nothing in Al Nakba except a shelter to hide from their shameful silence on one of the most horrific “Nakbas” in modern Arab history.

As 20th Century Begins, British ‘Orientalism’ Tool of Colonialism

By 
By D.W. Aossey

Long writes the book in a scholarly manner, but redeems it with a depth of insight and information on these fascinating personalities at a very important time in Middle Eastern history. Certainly, most will find “Reading Arabia” worth a look.

Reading Arabia: British Orientalism in the Age of Mass Publication 1880 –1930
By Andrew C. Long
Syracuse University Press, 2014. 264 pp.

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