News

Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman who has won second prize in the Banipal Translation Prize competition this year (Best work translated from Arabic to English)

Roger Allen writes for the judges:
“Iman Humaydan Younes’s beautifully crafted narrative tells a familiar story of life in a Lebanese village, and yet her narrative method and the poetic style that she invokes to tell her story make of this work a very different and unique portrait of a small societal unit that finds itself in confrontation with the processes of change, reflected in a clash of family values — most especially within the framework of gender issues, the tensions involved in either remaining in the homeland or travelling into exile abroad, and the relationship between present and past. Michelle Hartman’s excellent translation provides the reader with an English text that manages to mirror with both accuracy and readability the narrative traits of the Arabic original.”
Francine Stock comments: “The translation never overstates, allowing the reader to see how the woman’s life is circumscribed by political and economic forces within her relationships with friends and family, so her father’s adherence to the silkworms that feed on the mulberry tree, for example, presages financial trouble. The detail here is all.” Marilyn Booth commented that “her translation illuminates the juxtaposition of artless narration and complex structures of memory, social rootedness and its erosion, local and panoramic.” In his earlier review of Wild Mulberries, also published in Banipal 33, Aamer Hussein wrote: “Humaydan’s spare style, sensitively replicated in Michelle Hartman’s translation, pays homage to a number of influences, both Arab and European, through her prose, reflective, intelligent and pared down to necessities, is ultimately very much her own.”
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Adam Gacek: Arabic Manuscripts. A Vademecum for Readers

Arranged alphabetically by subject and/or concept, the present handbook has been conceived, for convenience sake and quick reference, as an aid to students and researchers who are often puzzled or even sometimes intimidated by the ‘mysterious’ world of Arabic manuscripts and the technical language that goes with it. A companion volume to the recently published The Arabic Manuscript Tradition (2001) and its Supplement (2008), the vademecum comprises some 200 entries of varying lengths dealing with almost all aspects of Arabic manuscript studies (codicology and palaeography). It is richly illustrated with specimens from manuscripts and expertly executed drawings. The main sequence is followed by a number of appendices covering abbreviations, letterforms, sūrah-headings, major reference works and a guide to the description of manuscripts, as well as charts of major historical periods and dynasties.
Readership: All those interested in Arabic works in manuscript form, the world of the scribe and scholar and their writing materials, the make-up of codices and writing styles, transmission of texts, and the arts of the book.

Malek Abisaab: Militant Women of a Fragile Nation

In Militant Women of a Fragile Nation, Malek Abisaab takes a gendered approach to labor conflicts, anticolonial struggles, and citizenship in modern Lebanon. The author traces the conditions and experiences of women workers at the French Tobacco Monopoly. Challenging the prevailing assumptions about culturally inscribed roles for Middle Eastern women, the book highlights traditions of public activism and militancy among rural women that are in turn adapted to the spaces of the factory. Women employed distinct strategies involving kinship, sectarian, gender, and class ties to enhance their work conditions and social benefits. Drawing on extensive ethnographic data, the author convincingly argues that the condition of women can only be explained by exploring the shifting relationship between culture, societal arrangements, and economic settings. Abisaab’s richly detailed work illuminates the impact of class and gender in the transformation of modern Lebanon.

Upcoming events:

Friday, 13 November 2009
“All Representation is Local: Haykal, Laroui, Said, Himmich”. Lecture by Hosam Aboul‐Ela (Houston University). Time: 2:30 pm. Morrice Hall, room 328. All welcome. (more info)