ESSAYS & FEATURES IN THE CURRENT AL JADID, VOL. 23, NO. 77, 2019

Lebanon’s Tide of Change: Revolutionaries vs. Predators
By Elie Chalala

The Lebanese and Iraqi uprisings, and recently those in Algeria and Sudan, have shaken up the gloom and doom discourse following the first wave of the Arab Spring in 2011. Following the Iranian-Russian-Assadist “victory” over the Syrian revolution, Hezbollah pundits and pseudo-leftists declared it fruitless to replace more than half a century of Syrian tyranny with a democratic system. Those same pundits have recently demonized the second wave of Arab protests in Lebanon and Iraq, portraying them as the outcome of imperialist conspiracies and predicting for them the same fate of the first wave in Syria. Unlike previous conflicts in Lebanon that divided the country along confessional lines, the current revolution includes all sects, both Christian and Muslim – a remarkable historical change. While sectarianism is deep-rooted in Lebanon, and in fact enshrined in the confessional apportionment of state power, the current uprising has united ordinary Lebanese against the corruption of the powerful.

Essays and Features

ESSAYS & FEATURES IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 23, NO. 77, 2019

Muayyad al-Rawi, Iraqi Poet And Renaissance Man Whose Work Painted a Portrait of the 1960s
By Al Jadid Staff

Muayyad al-Rawi, the poet and intellectual, pushed the free verse movement of Arabic poetry into a new dawn during the 1960s. To many, Muayyad was a literary theorist and spiritual guide for this generation of Iraqis. “If we want to draw a portrait of the 1960s, al-Rawi was one of its most important members; and however short the memory of subsequent literary generations, that era remains a milestone in the history of radical rebellions in Iraqi culture,” said Iraqi author Fatima al-Mohsen.

Essays and Features

ESSAYS & FEATURES IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 23, NO. 77, 2019

Lebanese Jewry: Once Part of the Country’s Confessional Map, Now Vanished
By Al Jadid Staff

With roots going back to the 7th and 15th centuries, many Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition settled in Lebanon. By the early 1700s, more Jews who had earlier fled to North Africa and the Middle East followed and settled in Lebanon’s Shouf Mountains, according to British Historian Kristen Schultz. But in recent years, this small Jewish community has been decreasing even further, numbering less than a hundred. Once boasting a population as high as 14,000 in 1958, the number of Lebanese Jews has shrunk in the wake of conflict: the short-lived civil war of 1958, the 15-year 1975 war, as well as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The fascination in the dwindling numbers within this community has especially enraptured news media.

Essays and Features

INTERVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 23, NO. 77, 2019

From the Euphrates to the Chicago River, ‘My Paintings Are My Home’ for Syrian Artist Etab Hreib
By Al Jadid Staff

The nostalgic paintings of Etab Hreib are deeply imbued with memory – from images of plains, rivers, and valleys, to the blue sea she recalls from her childhood. Etab said in a recent interview with Akram Qatrib, “The colors of the Euphrates have pulsed through my fingers like blood – the Euphrates is in my genes.” After leaving Syria for the U.S., her art has taken new shape, influenced by yearning for home and the tragic loss of her son Mazen at the hands of the Jihadists in Syria.

Interviews

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 23, NO. 77, 2019

How Lebanon’s Shiites Came to Live By ‘Hezbollah Rules’
By Al Jadid Staff

The emergence and influence of Hezbollah is the subject of numerous studies and books. “Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God” by Joseph Daher, a Swiss scholar of Syrian origin, asks what is Hezbollah and how did it come about? More specifically, Daher asks, what kind of hegemony does it exercise over the Shiite community in Lebanon? These questions are quite relevant in light of the unfolding Lebanese historical uprising. Hezbollah’s pivotal role in Lebanese politics and several other questions are explored thoroughly in this doctoral dissertation-turned analytical book.

Books

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 
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. 

 
The Female Suffering Body, Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature
By Abir Hamdar

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.

Pages