Arabic

Dr. Mona Kareem will discuss her translation of Octavia Butler’s masterpiece Kindred (1979) into Arabic.

Co-sponsored by Middle East and North African Studies, Black Studies, the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, English and American Literatures, and Literary Studies.

Palestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. Activists in both groups assert that they share a single political struggle for national liberation. Yet, obstacles inhibit their ability to speak to each other and as a collective. Geopolitical boundaries fragment Palestinians into ever smaller groups.

For fans of The Kite Runner comes this remarkable debut, the number one bestselling title in Iraq, Dubai and the UAE.

Moriel Rothman-Zecher, ‘11, returns to Middlebury to read from his first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, a coming-of-age novel of which the Jerusalem Post has said that it “conveys the complexities of Israeli and Palestinian life with passion, nuance and tenderness…” Rothman-Zecher “has shown a fearlessness and vulnerability on these pages that speak to his ability to explore difficult terrain without feeling the need to draw any neat or concise conclusions. It shuns certainty and is open, nuanced, inconclusive and often contradictory. Just like Israeli reality.”

In 1970 the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin were commissioned by Fatah (with funding from the Arab League) to create a film about the Palestinian Revolution. The footage they shot eventually became the well known essay film Ici et Ailleurs. In 1971 Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu visited the region to shoot footage for their film Japanese Red Army/PFLP Declaration of World War. These works have received considerable critical attention since they first appeared.

Listening Acts: Contemporary Tunisian-Andalusi Musical Politics
Rachel Colwell - University of California, Berkeley

As novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists, and as founders of influential literary salons, individuals from Greater Syria were key contributors to the Arabic literary awakening. By turning the spotlight on to one of these writers – the pioneering writer, poet, and artist Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) – Waïl Hassan will share with the Middlebury community his groundbreaking research on the reception and translation of Kahlil Gibran’s work in Brazil, one of the most important centers of Arabic literary production in the diaspora.

Public talk: Translating Arabic Poetry, Pre-Islamic to Modern: Creative Challenges and Opportunities. 

Discussing his recently published book, Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age (Princeton UP 2019), Tarek El-Ariss explores the way modes of confrontation, circulation, and writing shape contemporary knowledge production and critiques of power. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from the Arab world and beyond, El-Ariss connects Wikileaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture.