This issue of the Arab Studies Journal focuses on the dynamics between local and global forces. Included are four featured articles that explore social interactions in transnational and international contexts. This issue also contains a special “In Memoriam” section dedicated to Mahmoud Darwish, who passed away in August 2008.
The four featured articles cover a range of geographic locales and time periods. Ahmad Shokr outlines the influences of international expertise in the early phases of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Aswan Dam project in mid-twentieth century Egypt. Ellen Fleischmann examines the contentious and complicated history of the American Junior College (AJC) for Women that the American Presbyterian Syria Mission established in 1927. Fleischmann’s article shows that the AJC was a site of contestation for multiple visions of female education and modernity. It was also a locus for exploring the ambiguous American Protestant educational vision for the Middle East writ large. Jeffery Dyer analyzes the journals of nineteenth-century British travelers in the Arabian Peninsula to show that depictions of Bedouin men conformed to an idealized Victorian masculinity, and were later used to aid British imperial projects. Lori Allen considers international preconceptions on the relationship between women, politics, and Islam, their effects on Palestinian activism, and how Palestinians in the West Bank manipulate such preconceptions. Her analysis of the interplay of Palestinian and Western representations, arguments, and assumptions about women and politics demonstrates the effects of transnationally circulating discourse on, and symbolism of, modes of political expression.
In a special section, three authors celebrate and memorialize the life of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Sinan Antoon fills the gaping void of Darwish’s absence as witness and narrator of the assaults on Palestinian life by reminding us of the poet’s words on Gaza. Elias Khoury bids farewell to his friend and reflects on Darwish’s poetic intuition, his crystallization of the Palestinian story into a “lyrical epic,” and his simultaneous creation of and estrangement from the homeland. Jeffrey Sacks, meanwhile, ponders Darwish’s linguistic battle to dismantle the barbed wires of separation, and touches on texts by Etel Adnan, Frantz Fanon, Jean Genet, and Hannah Arendt. Sacks reminds us that reading, and re-reading, Darwish’s poetry encourages us to refuse “those dimensions of separation which the colonial situation continues to impart, to persevere toward the future – to “lend one’s ear to tomorrow.”
Content:
Articles
Hydropolitics, Economy, and the Aswan High Dam in Mid-Century Egypt
by Ahmad Shokr
Mothers of Martyrs and Suicide Bombers: The Gender of Ethical Discourse in the Second Palestinian Intifada
by Lori A. Allen
"Under an American Roof": The Beginnings of the American Junior College for Women in Beirut
by Ellen L. Fleischmann
Desert Saints or Lions Without Teeth? British Portrayals of Bedouin Masculinity in the Nineteenth-Century Arabian Peninsula
by Jeffery Dyer
In Memoriam: Mahmoud Darwish
Guest Editorial: Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)
by Sinan Antoon
The Poet is Dead: Elias Khoury Remembers His Friend Mahmoud Darwish
by Elias Khoury
On Decolonization
by Jeffrey Sacks
Book Reviews
So Far From Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants to Modern Mexico
by Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp
reviewed by Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos
French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism
by Peter J. Bloom
reviewed by Joshua Schreier
The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe: Academic and Religious freedom in the 21st Century
edited by Willem B. Drees and Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld
reviewed by Simon Jackson
Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. "War on Terror,"
edited by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad
reviewed by Hazem Jamjoum
Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt
by Richard Jacquemond, translated by David Tresilian
reviewed by Yasmine Ramadan
Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects
edited by Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber
reviewed by Amy Aisen Elouafi
Overcoming Zionism: Creating A Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine
by Joel Kovel
reviewed by Ryvka Bar Zohar
Governing Property, Making the Modern State: Law, Administration and Production in Ottoman Syria
by Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith
reviewed by Nora Barakat
Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal Justice
by Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi
reviewed by Samar Al-Bulushi
The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt
by Omnia El Shakry
reviewed by Lisa Pollard
Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731
by Elizabeth Sirriyeh
reviewed by Steve Tamari
Review Essay
Acting and Playing: Performance in the Modern Middle East
by Carmen M. K. Gitre