Bøger af Ferial Ghazoul

This issue of Alif investigates the different strata constituting texts, and the presence of older material (myths, classics, hymns, rituals, romance, philosophical fragments, etc.) as subtexts in literature. Articles explore the processes and modalities of such inclusions in a given work or the corpus of an author. The issue also includes critical essays on the nature of continuity and correspondence in plots, characters, and styles as well as redeployment of older motifs in modern and postmodern works.Contributors: English section: Walid Bitar, Leslie Croxford, Ananya Kabir, Rondo Keele, Steven Nimis, John Rodenbeck, Edward Said, Doris Shoukri, Mounira Soliman, Steffen Stelzer.Arabic section: Mohammed 'Ajina, Mohammed Birairi, Ayman Al-Desouky, Hasab al-Sheikh Ja'far, Scheherazade Hassan, Sami Mahdi, Samia Mehrez, Mai Muzaffar/Rafa Nasiri, Lamis Al-Nakkash/Doris Shoukri, Nagwa Sha'ban.

This issue of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics is devoted to the intersection of the imaginary and the documentary, the fictional and the cultural in the three genres of literature (poetry, fiction, and drama), in history, in film (feature and documentary), in photography, in plastic arts, and in architecture. Collage in art, portrait paintings, political poetry, archival footage in films, the historical novel, and the metaphors of historiography are some of the examples that demonstrate the interfacing between the imaginary and the documentary. Subjectivity and ideology of the artist and scholar might be couched in a flight of fantasy or in a rational argument, but in both cases they are joined to a specific worldview that is analyzed and discussed.

This interdisciplinary issue of the literary journal Alif is devoted to the desert-as a geographical locus and symbolic image-and to various texts related to it, drawn from literature and the arts, history and anthropology, film and environmental studies.Scholars from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America contribute articles in Arabic, English, and French related to the visual representation of the desert in medieval iconography and in contemporary cinema, in American poetry and in pre-Islamic poetics, in human geography and in sociological thought, in French novels and in Arabic novels, in religious traditions and in ecological approaches, in travel literature and in critical discourse.Includes contributions by Saeed Alwakeel, Saad El Bazei, Sharif Elmusa, Jehan Farouk, Naglaa Hassan, Abdullah Ibrahim, Salma Mobarak, Senayon Olaoluwa, Yasmine Ramadan, Nathalie Roman, Randa Sabry.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the most recent research trends and directions in the humanitiesThis issue of Alif is dedicated to efforts to redefine and reorient the humanities in light of global institutional and intellectual realities. "Mapping" is construed in several ways: the more literal meaning of geographical "reorientation" in the sense of efforts to redefine the relationship between global north and south, and between Western and non-Western intellectual traditions. It also refers to the remapping of the modern university by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work in the humanities that brings it to new shores such as the digital humanities and medical humanities. Essays map out ways for the humanities to better engage the extra-academic pressures shaping the modern university as it remains true to its own best long-standing goals and values.Editorial Board (alphabetically by last name): Omaima Abou Bakr (Cairo University)Saad Albazei (King Saud University)Gaber Asfour (Cairo University)Mohammed Berrada (University of Mohamed V) Ira Dworkin (Texas A&M University)Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London) Sabry Hafez (SOAS, University of London) Richard Jacquemond (Aix Marseille University) Céza Kassem-Draz (AUC and Cairo University) As'ad Khairallah (American University of Beirut) Andrew N. Rubin (University of Texas at Dallas) Randa Sabry (Cairo University)Doris Enright-Clark Shoukri (AUC)Hoda Wasfi (Ain Shams University)Contributors (alphabetically by last name): Shereen Abouelnaga, Cairo University, EgyptTamer Amin, American University of Beirut, LebanonBrian James Baer, Kent State University, Ohio, USAAbdesslam Benabdelali, Mohammed V University, Rabat, MoroccoClaire Gallien, University Paul Valéry, Montpellier, FranceNadia Hashish, Ain Shams University, Cairo, EgyptNaglaa Saad Hassan, Fayoum University, EgyptHassan Hilmy, Hassan II University, Casablanca, MoroccoSamia Al Hodathy, Paris Nanterre University, FranceHala Kamal, Cairo University, EgyptDavid Konstan, New York University, USAHossam Nayel, the Academy of Arts, Cairo, EgyptAntonio Pacifico, Oriental University Institute, Naples, ItalyYasmine Sweed, MSA University, Cairo, EgyptLevi Thompson, University of Colorado-Boulder, USAYoussef Yacoubi, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, USA