Arab Studies Quarterly

Issue Number

Latest documents

• Books in Brief
• Editor’s Note
• Brehony, Louis. Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance
• Echoes of Exile

  This article delves into the intricacies of memory, resistance, and identity within the context of Palestinian experiences, as portrayed in Hala Alyan’s novel, Salt Houses. This study examines the profound impact of rememory on the collective consciousness of a Palestinian family haunted by forced expulsions, upheavals, and the enduring cycle of occupation and forced migrations. The essay underscores that residual elements of past are not a passive recollection but active agents that shape the present and future. It highlights how traumatic pasts, passed down through generations, become an enduring legacy, connecting history with contemporary realities. Drawing on the characters’ experiences, it showcases how the struggle for identity and resistance against displacement is interwoven with the memory of ancestral trauma. Furthermore, the research explores the role of elder Palestinians, especially grandmothers, in preserving cultural heritage and transmitting stories that bridge generations. These narratives serve not only to understand history but also as a means of challenging occupation and advocating for the right of return. The article investigates the dissonance between imagined homelands and present-day realities, shedding light on the challenges faced by subsequent generations attempting to reclaim their heritage.

• Arab Studies Quarterly
• Herzl’s Zionism and Settler Colonialism in Palestine

  This article examines Zionist claims to colonize Palestine and the role of Great Britain and prominent European Zionist Jews in the effort to establish Israel. Theodore Herzl, his lieutenants, and supporters personify Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” while acting and appearing as respectable statesmen, scientists, journalists, and businesspeople who advocated for freedom, liberation, and combating antisemitism. They deliberately collaborated with known antisemites and worked to dismantle ancient Jewish communities, relentlessly removing Jews out of their countries of origin, colonizing Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state, ethnically cleansing the indigenous people of Palestine, fabricating history, erasing Palestine and its long history, demeaning and oppressing the Palestinian people, and suppressing and appropriating Palestinian culture.

• Tusiani, Michael D. And Anne-Marie Johnson. From Black Gold to Frozen Gas: How Qatar Became an Energy Superpower
• Sexuality in Emerging Translated Modern Arabic Literature

  This article addresses the question of how The Corpse Washer (2013) by Sinan Antoon employs the translation of sexually explicit language to present a “resistant and hybrid cultural identity.” Adopting a postcolonial framework, the article explores the kinds of literary, linguistic, and translation-related interventions Antoon exerts to provide a hybrid-discourse to the hegemonic Anglo-American discourse of Arab sexuality, particularly through the creative and conscious self-translation of his novel.

• Essay by the Editor
• Contents

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