Overview

A wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary collection of essays that decenter, critique, and problematize predominant notions of the meaning of mortality for human creativity This issue of Alif explores the ways in which humans have come to confront their mortality across time and space. Contributions question the nature of loss, grief, and the possibility of an afterlife. Is death only an interlude? Perhaps simply the end? How have people used literature and the arts to conceptualize its relentless presence in our existence? The articles in this issue decenter, critique, and problematize predominant notions of the meaning of mortality for human creativity. They provide a wide scope of responses to mortality, anthropologically, philosophically, and psychologically. They shed light on different cultural receptions of loss, annihilation, and mortality, ranging from India to Yemen, Palestine to Iraq, the Island of Lampedusa to the war-ravished city of Beirut, among many other locales. Death is dealt with in an intimate fashion through the exploration and reinterpretation of modern and classical elegiac poetry, children's picturebooks, fictional accounts of war, grief, and displacement, and dramatic treatments of dying and the afterlife. Contributors: Hajjaj Abu Jabr, Egyptian Academy of Arts, Cairo, Egypt Karam AbuSehly, Beni-Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt Hala Amin, Beni-Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt Shaimaa El-Ateek, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Mohamed Birairi, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt, and American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Elliott Colla, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA Saeed Elmasry, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt Shaimaa Gohar, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt Walid El Khachab, York University, Toronto, Canada Yasmine Motawy, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Dani Nassif, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany Andrea Maria Negri, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany Marwa Ramadan, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt Caroline Rooney, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom Tania Al Saadi, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden May Telmissany, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada Shahla Ujayli, American University of Madaba, Madaba, Jordan

Full Product Details

Author:   Walid El Hamamsy
Publisher:   American University in Cairo Press
Imprint:   American University in Cairo Press
ISBN:  

9781649032362

ISBN 10:   1649032366
Pages:   576
Publication Date:   02 March 2023
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

English and French Section Caroline Rooney: Shakespeare’s Hermetic Lampedusa: From Colonial Fantasies to the Afterlife in The Tempest Andrea Maria Negri: Representations of Death in al-Maqāmāt al-Hindiyya Shaimaa El-Ateek: Thanatogenos: Photographing Death and Writing Mourning in Barthes’s Camera Lucida and Mourning Diary Elliott Colla: Elegy and Mobilization: Poetry, Mourning, and the Student Uprising of January 1972 Marwa Ramadan: On the Threshold of Death: Liminality and Transformation in Margaret Edson’s Wit Tania Al Saadi: La mort dans la littérature irakienne de l’exil : L’exemple d’Inaam Kachachi Shaimaa Gohar: Taming the Terror of Death in George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo Hala Amin: Frankenstein’s Monster, Past and Present: Writing Against Death in Frankenstein in Baghdad Arabic Section Saeed Elmasry: Cultural Approaches to Mortality: A Critical Overview of the Anthropology of Death Mohamed Birairi: Confronting Annihilation: Readings in Pre-Islamic Poetry Karam AbuSehly: Literature as Archive of Mortality: Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Trauerspie lMay Telmissany: Death and the Annihilation of History in Egyptian Surrealism Hajjaj Abu Jabr: Death of God Theology: The Holocaust of Paul Celan and Mahmoud Darwish Shahla Ujayli: ‘Abd al-Salām al-‘Ujaylī’s Stories of Illness between Culture and the Medical Institution Walid El Khachab: Mystic Annihilation in Sufi Art: Death as a Form of Life Dani Nassif: Traumatic Past and Fantasy: Testimonies of the Undead in Rabī‘ Jābir’s Bīrītūs Yasmine Motawy: “Normal Grief”: Death in Children’s Picturebooks

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Author Information

Walid El Hamamsy is assistant professor of cultural studies at Cairo University. His academic interests focus on popular culture, comparative literature, translation, and gender. He is co-translator into Arabic of Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Democracy (2011) and co-editor of Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook (2013). He lives in Cairo.

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