Speaking Truth to Power: Arab-American Women Intellectuals on Freedom, Justice, and Return (Panel at NeMLA, Boston, 5-8 March, 2020)

deadline for submissions: 
September 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: 
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
contact email: 

Historically invisible, women from the Arab world have recently been writing themselves into visibility and they are becoming agents of possible transformations in their society. Their voices had not been heard traditionally, but the fact that they are inhabiting the space of diaspora as a result of migration helped them become effective agents of border crossing and gave them the tools necessary to shape new identities and sound themselves out at both national and international levels. Arab-American women intellectuals have found a medium through their narratives to address pressing issues in the current age of socio-political turmoil. Edward Said defines the intellectual as “someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.” In accordance with Said’s definition of the intellectual, this panel provides the opportunity to explore, construct, and deconstruct the various aesthetic and formal strategies that Arab-American women intellectuals use in their narratives to challenge and speak truth to power, (whether that power is a repressive regime or a socially constructed power like race, gender, class, or religion). The panel accepts papers that include but are not limited to:

· War, Occupation, Injustice, and Oppression

· Return and the Homeland

· Terror and Violence

· Resistance, Freedom and Justice

· Immigration, Migration, and Refugees

· Wall and Borders

· Race, Class, and Gender Oppression

· National Identity and Struggle for Recognition

· Racism, Islamophobia, and Religious Identities

· Trauma and Collective Memory

· Identity Politics

 

You can submit a paper abstract to this session at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17870

For more information, contact Sahar Al-Shoubaki at dxhv@iup.edu