Hope in the Most Unlikely Spaces: Thawra and the Contemporary Arabic Novel

In the early to mid-twentieth century, many novelists in the Arab world championed Arab nationalism in their literary reflections on the social and political struggles of their countries, depicting these struggles primarily in terms of spatial binaries that pitted the Arab world against the West, even as they imported Western literary models of progress and modernity into their own work. The intense experience of national awakening that infused their writing often placed these authors at a literary disadvantage, for in their literature, all too often the depth and diversity of Arabic cultures and the complexity of socio-political struggles across the Arab world were undermined by restrictive spatial discourses that tended to focus only on particular versions of Arab history and on a seemingly unifying national predicament. Between the Arab defeat of 1967 and the present day, however, an increasing number of Arab authors have turned to less restrictive forms of spatial discourse in search of a language that might offer alternative narratives of hope beyond the predictable, and seemingly thwarted, trajectories of nationalism. This study traces the ways in which contemporary Arab authors from Egypt and the Sudan have endeavoured to re-think and re-define the Arab identity in ever-changing spaces where elements of the local and the global, the traditional and the modern, interact both competitively and harmoniously. I examine the spatial language and the tropes used in three Arabic novels, viewing them through the lens of thawra (revolution) in both its socio-political and artistic manifestations. Linking the manifestations of thawra in each text to different scenes of revolution in the Arab world today, in Chapter Two, I consider how, at a stage when the Sudan of the sixties was both still dealing with colonial withdrawal and struggling to establish itself as a nation-state, the geographical and textual landscapes of Tayeb Salih‟s Season of Migration to the North depict the ongoing dilemma of the Sudanese identity. In Chapter Three, I examine Alaa iii al-Aswany‟s The Yacoubian Building in the context of a socially diseased and politically corrupt Egypt of the nineties: social, political, modern, historical, local, and global elements intertwine in a dizzyingly complex spatial network of associations that sheds light on the complicated reasons behind today‟s Egyptian thawra. In Chapter Four, the final chapter, Gamal al-Ghitani‟s approach to his Egypt in Pyramid Texts drifts far away from Salih‟s anguished Sudan and al-Aswany‟s chaotic Cairo to a realm where thawra manifests itself artistically in a sophisticated spatial language that challenges all forms of spatial hegemony and, consequently, old and new forms of social, political, and cultural oppression in the Arab world.

'Law of their own': notes on legal alterity in early nineteenth-century Ireland

This article investigates intersections between legal and literary discourse in Ireland in the early 19th century, and explores how judicial tropes, in particular that of an “alternative judiciary”, shape perceptions of Irish identity as well as cultural expression. Whilst Ireland and the Irish were typically characterized as lawless, this article examines the ubiquitous presence of alternative legal systems, focusing on the writings of Thomas Moore (1779–1852) and William Carleton (1794–1869). These representations, and the questions of authority and legitimacy that they provoke, are considered within critical debates about the development of literary forms in Ireland, and the inherent relationship that legal alterity evokes between textual and judicial authority.

Translating ‘gaytown’: the collision of global and local in bringing Australian queer play Bison to Belfast.

Sydney playwright Lachlan Philpott’s Bison (2000/2009) is immersed in a sweaty, summery Antipodean scene of bronzed and toned bodies. It is located in the flora and fauna of gum trees and biting ants. Yet, despite this, it could be argued that at its heart it is not a specifically Australian site, but an all-too translatable scene that seems to be played out in gay clubs, bars, chatrooms and saunas around the Western world: men repeating patterns, looking for sex or love; checking out bodies, craving perfection; avoiding, and occasionally seeking, disease. At least, that was my assumption when I decided to direct the play in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2009. Philpott came to Belfast to workshop the play with the actors and, as a group, we restructured the play and tried to find a way to ‘de-Australianise’ it without necessarily placing it in a new geographical place - Northern Ireland - through linguistic clues in the text. As Philpott put it: ‘Let’s not make this play about Belfast or Sydney or London or anywhere because it is not a fair reflection of these scenes. Maybe we should just identify the generic elements of this world and then make Bison a play that reflects gaytown – because the rituals are all the same in Western society’. The experience of doing the play in Belfast made clear, however, that ideas of a global gay identity/experience –though highly marketed – fail to account for the vastly different situations of embodied gay experience. And the Northern Irish gay experience, while it has imported the usual ‘generic’ tropes of gayness, sits within a specific cultural context in which the farsighted legislation on equality for gays (imposed by either London or the EU) vastly outstrips wider societal thinking. For many in Northern Ireland, erstwhile MP Iris Robinson’s comments about homosexuality being an ‘abomination’ were a reason to support her, rather than to reject her. For me, the comments were the catalyst to doing Bison in Belfast.

'False, fleeting, perjured Clarence': pseudonymity and criminality in the writings of James Clarence Mangan

This article explores the significance of the adopted partial pseudonym “Clarence” to James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), who is increasingly regarded as the most important Irish poet before W. B. Yeats. Tracing the literary history of “Clarence” from Shakespeare to Maria Edgeworth, this essay argues that the intriguing adoption exposes a preoccupation with themes of unlawful textual copying that is at the centre of Mangan’s imagination. These tropes assume singular significance when appreciated alongside Mangan’s profession as a scrivener. While literary criticism has separated Mangan the poet from Mangan the legal scribe, his hitherto under-explored assumption of “Clarence” provides a clue to their close and crucial connection. These themes of pseudonymity, copying, and criminality combine with particular resonance in his quasi-translation “The Man in the Cloak” (1838) to open up new perspectives on Mangan’s writing and its participation in wider European cultural contexts and concerns. The essay will conclude with a salient comparison of Mangan’s story with Nikolay Gogol’s seminal story “The Overcoat”, or, “The Cloak” (1842).

"Angels and Demons in Cromwellian and Restoration Ireland: Heresy and the Supernatural"

This essay explores accounts of supernatural activity in Cromwellian and Restoration Ireland. Religious life in Cromwellian Ireland was driven by expectations of the unusual—including audible voices from heaven, material encounters with angels, and spiritual encounters with demons. Some conservative Protestants linked this activity to the development and dissemination of heretical belief, while some who had such encounters were confident that it was compatible with the Cromwellian religious mainstream. Crawford Gribben explores the flexibility in the discourse of the marvelous in Ireland and the ways in which the administration contributed to it, and the alignment of the supernatural with various confessional convictions and postures, as well as theological radicalism. After the Restoration, accounts of supernatural encounters were remembered as ghost stories, not as matters for theological debate, a cultural transition linked to the development of a historiography that has continued to invest the Irish Cromwellian past with Gothic tropes.

'O daughter ... forget your people and your father's house': Early Modern Women Writers and the Spanish Imaginary

‘O daughter … forget your people and your father’s house’: Early Modern Women Writers and the Spanish ImaginaryAnne Holloway and Ramona WrayHolloway and Wray consider the perspectives offered by two very different seventeenth-century women (Mary Bonaventure Browne, or Mother Browne (b.1615- and Lady Ann Fanshawe (b.1625) both of whom exchanged Ireland for Spain, and both of whom record journeys both ‘real’ and imagined in their writings. Browne’s deployment of hagiographical tropes in her History of the Poor Clares may reveal the potential impact of Iberian conventual culture; her allusions to the markers of sanctity insistent on the immutability of the body, whilst accepting and anticipating spectral presence in the form of bilocation. Fanshawe’s Memoirs are considered alongside the material legacy of her ‘Booke of Receipts of Physickes, Salues, Waters, Cordialls, Preserues and Cookery.’ Her impressions both in transit and within the domus are similarly marked by receptivity and sensitivity to the host culture. Amidst a backdrop of religious persecution and political uncertainty, in both cases Spain emerges as a potentially enabling context for creativity and self-expression.Keywords: Memoir; Franciscan; Poor Clares; Fanshawe; Mary Bonaventure Browne; hagiography; life-writing; autobiography, women writers

Cataloguing Kays: Body Image in the Catalogues of Kay & Co Ltd of Worcester, 1920 - 2000. JISC Final Report

Cataloguing Kays is a university-run project intended to create a community web-archive to celebrate the history and public memory of Kay & Co Ltd of Worcester, a noted mailorder catalogue company which was, until 2006, the largest employer in Worcester. The Kays Archive, housed at UoW, is one of the most comprehensive archive collections of 20th century mail-order catalogues in the UK and has a strong local elevance. The catalogues provide a window into over 100 years of body image, social history, consumable goods, fashion and design. The Project Team created www.WorldofKays.org, an online, fully-searchable archive containing 1500 digitised images from the catalogues, 1920-2000. The website is intended to form a seed bed for international research, focussing in particular on the representation of body image and the way the catalogues represent the developing tropes of consumer lifestyle and aspiration. The images are enhanced by blog postings from or film and audio interviews with local residents and former Kays staff members, who recall how the goods were selected and presented; as well as the impact the mail-order industry had on shaping 20th century lifestyle and consumption. These interviews and blogs have been sourced through the Cataloguing Kays team’s outreach activity in the local, academic and online communities. From the outset, we, the Cataloguing Kays team, engaged with online communities through social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, and through specialist blogs and online forums, inviting comment and contributions. Through events for the general public and a programme of targeted community outreach work with Kays Heritage Group and support groups for Worcestershire’s young and adult carers, we have also collected filmed and audio reminiscence material as well as community art and poetry content for the website. Our academic conference, the Catalogue of Dreams, showcased both the website and the physical archive to the wider academic, cultural and heritage sectors, provoking lively debateand much interest from international scholars.

Walls of Indifference: Arizona and the Ecology of Militarization

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013

Hollywood and world cinema influences: tracing intertextuality in the works of two contemporary filmmakers from Francophone Africa; Mahamat Saleh Haroun and Abderrahmane Sissako

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass Anton Chekhov Representations of Africa in cinema are almost as old as cinema itself and date back to Hollywood’s silent era. Most early examples feature the continent as a mere exotic backdrop and include The Sheik (Melford 1921), soon followed, in 1926, by George Fitzmaurice’s Son of the Sheik starring Rudolph Valentino. The next decade brought Van Dyke’s Tarzan movies, Robert Stevenson’s King Solomon’s Mines (1937), and, on the European side, Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1936). For representations of Francophone Africa by Africans themselves, the viewing public more or less had to wait, however, until decolonisation in the 1960s (with, for example, Sembene Ousmane’s Borom Sarret and La Noire de…, both released in 1966 and, in 1968, Mandabi). Since then Francophone African cinema has come a long way and has diversified into various strands. Between Borom Sarret and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2006 Daratt, Saison sèche - or the same director’s Un homme qui crie, almost half a century has elapsed. Over this period, films inevitably have addressed a spectrum of visual, ideological and political tropes. They range from unadorned depictions of the newly independent states and their societies to highly aestheticised productions, not to mention surreal and poetic visions as displayed for instance in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973). Most of the early films send an overt socio-political message which is a clear and explicit denunciation of a corrupt state of affairs (Souleymane Cissé’s Baara, 1977). They aim to trigger strong emotional and political responses from the viewer, in unambiguous support for the film-maker’s stand. Sembene himself declared: “I consider cinema a means of political action” (Murphy 2000: 221). Similarly, the Mauritanian director Med Hondo wishes to “take up this technical medium and to make it a mouthpiece on behalf of [his] fellow Africans and Arabs” (Jeffries 2002: 11). All this echoes the claims of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes (FEPACI, founded in 1969), an organisation “dedicated to the liberation of Africa”. In sharp contrast to the incipient momentum given Francophonie by Bourguiba, the Nigerien Hamani Diori and the Senegalese Senghor, who invoked a worldwide communauté organique francophone, FEPACI called for “the creation of an aesthetics of disalienation… [using] didactic... forms to denounce the alienation of countries that were politically independent but culturally and economically dependent on the West” (Diawara 1996: 40). Sembene’s Xala (1974) became the blueprint for this, to this day the best-known vein of Francophone African cinema. Thus considered, this pedigree seems a million miles from mainstream global cinema with its overriding mission to entertain. A question therefore arises: to what extent can a cinema that sprang from such beginnings be seen to interface in any meaningful way with a global film industry that, overwhelmingly and for a century, has indeed entertained the world – with Hollywood at its centre?

Troparium-prosarium ad usum Sancti Martialis Lemovicensis.

F. I Fragments des messes de Noël. F. 1 Kyriale. F. 4 Chants pour la procession des Rameaux et l'adoration de la Croix, et chants gallicans de communion pour Noël et Pâques. F. 8-46v Tropaire : — s. Martial (32). F. 47 et 57v Kyrie, avec et sans tropes F. 59v Credo, avec le chant gallican, et Credimus. F. 61v Sanctus. F. 65v Agnus. F. 68v Ite missa est. F. 69v « Laudes de circulo anni. » F. 87 Alleluias avec les séquences. F. 96-155 Prosier : — ste Valière (112) ; — s. Martial (127). F. 155 Pièces de chant diverses. (Édit. partielle par Frere, Winchester Troper, 1894, 156-217). Cf. L. Gautier, Tropes, 111 ; Bannister, dans Rassegna gregoriana, 1906, 27.

Antiphonarium et Graduale.

Principales fêtes seulement. F. 1-158v Antiphonaire ; — Commun des saints (147). F. 159-249v Graduel : — Commun des saints (198v) ; — Messes votives (237v). F. 249v Kyriale, avec et sans tropes. F. 262v Prosaire. F. 300 Tables. F. 302 Antiennes et répons pour les samedis et dimanches. F. 324 Tons des psaumes et neumes.

Representations of swinging London in 1960s British cinema : Blowup (1966), Smashing Time (1967), and Performance (1970)

This thesis explores the representation of Swinging London in three examples of 1960s British cinema: Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966), Smashing Time (Desmond Davis, 1967) and Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970). It suggests that the films chronologically signify the evolution, commodification and dissolution of the Swinging London era. The thesis explores how the concept of Swinging London is both critiqued and perpetuated in each film through the use of visual tropes: the reconstruction of London as a cinematic space; the Pop photographer; the dolly; representations of music performance and fashion; the appropriation of signs and symbols associated with the visual culture of Swinging London. Using fashion, music performance, consumerism and cultural symbolism as visual narratives, each film also explores the construction of youth identity through the representation of manufactured and mediated images. Ultimately, these films reinforce Swinging London as a visual economy that circulates media images as commodities within a system of exchange. With this in view, the signs and symbols that comprise the visual culture of Swinging London are as central and significant to the cultural era as their material reality. While they attempt to destabilize prevailing representations of the era through the reproduction and exchange of such symbols, Blowup, Smashing Time, and Performance nevertheless contribute to the nostalgia for Swinging London in larger cultural memory.

Between the panels: How anti-Black racism has recycled myths of the Black body in comic books

Anti-Black racism continues to be a widespread problem, and as such deserves investigation and elimination. As Jackson (2006) says; “There is a hyperawareness…of the negative inscriptions associated with the Black masculine body as criminal, angry and incapacitated.” (2) To continue the study of the changing face of racism, the researcher must be well equipped with a contemporary methodology which is adaptable and exploratory. Due to the malleability of racism, research into its elimination must make inroads to areas that have heretofore been neglected and overlooked by traditional academic study. This project achieves a unique perspective by undertaking a theoretical exploration of racist stereotypes and motifs in the world of mass produced superhero comic books, a genre of comics which has neither yet been thoroughly investigated for the use of racist stereotypes nor been the focus of anti-racist scholarship.

Espace et récit : l’inscription des temps dans la ville : parcours stochastiques chez Julio Cortázar

De la mouvance du récit contemporain fragmenté, labyrinthique, se dégage un rapport significatif entre les personnages du récit et les lieux dans lesquels ils gravitent : lieux comme figures diverses et discontinues de l’histoire et des mythes y étant inscrits. Cette construction interactive entre lieu et sujet fait intervenir l’espace comme primordial, et, ainsi, redéfinit l’importance du temps dans l’écrit. Le temps n’adviendrait plus seulement dans le « raconté », comme le suggère Ricœur, mais dans les strates successives de son inscription dans les lieux : le lieu est vécu comme art combinatoire des expériences qui s’y rattachent. C’est par le projet continuel et imparfait du sujet à se situer, plus spécifiquement ici dans la ville et dans celles auxquelles il s’identifie, que surgit l’expression du récit. À travers trois œuvres de Julio Cortázar, le temps sera pensé comme une modalité de fragments « empilables », inscrite dans les lieux signifiants, qui saura émerger au conscient par l’entremise de la porosité de la ville, de sa capacité à susciter des « sauts », des passages. Ce qui lie les espaces architectoniques et le temps qui s’y imprime au sujet qui doit se dire pour exister, mettre en récit afin d’unifier les parties discontinues de son être, émergera dans le « devenir en mouvement », superposition du récit et de l’expérience réelle, par les tropes cortazariens de l’expérimentation, jeu, passage et langage. Là surgira dans l’acte créatif une dynamique spécifique à la ville qui envahit et guide le sujet: sa singularité plurielle.

The career of the missed encounter in classic american literature

Cette dissertation explore la carrière de la rencontre manquée Lacanienne dans la littérature canonique américaine du dix-neuvième siècle à travers le prisme de la psychanalyse, la déconstruction, le postmodernisme et le postcolonialisme. Je me concentre particulièrement sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne et Moby-Dick de Melville, en montrant comment ils sont investis dans l'économie narrative de la rencontre manquée, l'économie de ce qui est au-delà de la symbolisation et l'assimilation. L’introduction examine les contours et les détours historiques, philosophiques et théoriques du concept de la rencontre manquée. Cette dissertation a donc deux objectifs: d'une part, elle tente d'examiner le statut et la fonction de la rencontre manquée dans la littérature américaine du dix-neuvième siècle, et d’autre part, elle explore comment la théorisation de la rencontre manquée pourrait nous aider à aller au-delà de la théorisation binaire qui caractérise les scènes géopolitiques actuelles. Mon premier chapitre sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne, tente de tracer la carrière du signifiant comme une navette entre l'archive et l'avenir, entre le sujet et l'objet, entre le signifiant et le signifié. Le but de ce chapitre est de rendre compte de la temporalité du signifiant et la temporalité de la subjectivité et d’expliquer comment ils répondent à la temporalité du tuché. En explorant la dimension crypto-temporelle de la rencontre manquée, ce chapitre étudie l'excès de cryptes par la poétique (principalement prosopopée, anasémie, et les tropes d'exhumation). Le deuxième chapitre élabore sur les contours de la rencontre manquée. En adoptant des approches psychanalytiques et déconstructives, ce chapitre négocie la temporalité de la rencontre manquée (la temporalité de l'automaton et de la répétition). En explorant la temporalité narrative (prolepse et analepse) conjointement à la psycho-poétique du double, ce chapitre essaie de dévoiler les vicissitudes de la mélancolie et la “dépression narcissique” dans Moby-Dick (en particulier la répétition d'Achab lors de sa rencontre originelle dénarrée ou jamais racontée avec le cachalot blanc et sa position mélancolique par rapport à l'objet qu'il a perdu). En exposant la nature du trauma comme une rencontre manquée, dont les résidus se manifestent symptomatiquement par la répétition (et le doublement), ce chapitre explique le glissement de la lettre (par l'entremise du supplément et de la différance). Le troisième chapitre élargit la portée de la rencontre manquée pour inclure les Autres de l'Amérique. Le but principal de ce chapitre est d'évaluer les investitures politiques, culturelles, imaginaires et libidinales de la rencontre manquée dans le Réel, le Symbolique nationale des États-Unis et la réalité géopolitique actuelle. Il traite également de la relation ambiguë entre la jouissance et le Symbolique: la manière dont la jouissance anime et régit le Symbolique tout en confondant la distinction entre le Réel et la réalité et en protégeant ses manœuvres excessives.