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Contemporary Feminist Art by Women in North Africa: Body Talks dissects the diverse perceptions of the body and how it becomes symbolically charged in the artwork of six contemporary Maghrebi female artists: Majida Khattari, Lalla Essaydi, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Déborah Benzaquen, Fatima Mazmouz and Zaïnab Fasiki. With a focus on the French, Maghrebi, and North American market and examining artistic mediums ranging from painting and photography to videos and installations, Ramona Mielusel highlights how the body functions as both subject and object of aesthetic discourse. The author denotes these artistic works as the intersection of the intimate and the impersonal, of the individual perception and the communitarian and societal view, without promoting a fixed notion of the body in a specific spatiality and temporality. This book explores the work of female Maghrebi artists and their intentional framing of the body’s duality between the symbolic and the real, between cultural interpretation of the body in literature and the actual perception of the body.
The first decades of the new millennium have been marked by major political changes. Although The West has wished to revisit internal and international politics concerning migration policies, refugee status, integration, secularism, and the dismantling of communitarianism, events like the Syrian refugee crisis, the terrorist attacks in France in 2015-2016, and the economic crisis of 2008 have resurrected concepts such as national identity, integration, citizenship and re-shaping state policies in many developed countries. In France and Canada, more recent public elections have brought complex democratic political figures like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau to the public eye. Both leaders...
Artistic (Self)-Representations of Islam and Muslims: Perspectives Across France and the Maghreb is a collection of essays that explores the question of artistic representation(s)/self-representation(s) of Muslim religious and cultural identity in France, the Maghreb and in/between since the 2000s. The volume offers a plurality of feminine and masculine voices and points of view on cultural Islam (Franco-French, Franco-Maghrebi, Maghrebi), all the while addressing the impact of events like 9/11, the tragic attacks in France in 2015-2016 (Charlie Hebdo, Stade de France, Bataclan, Nice), and the Arab Spring. Taken together, the volume features a transnational and transversal set of artistic vo...
In Franco-Maghrebi Artists of the 2000s: Transnational Narratives and Identities Ramona Mielusel offers an account of the way how young artists (writers, filmmakers, actors, singers, photographers, contemporary migrant artists) of Maghrebi origin residing in France during the last twenty years (2000-2016) contest French “national identity” in their work. Mielusel's interest lies in analyzing the impact that these “minor” artists and their chosen genres have on mainstream cultural productions. She argues that constant displacement and changes in political, social and cultural contexts have significantly transformed the dynamics that govern the relationship between the center (Metropolitan France) and the periphery (its Others). Most importantly, she seeks to position their work in the field of transnationalism, which has dominated postcolonial studies and cultural studies in the past decade.
Representation of the Banlieusard in Literature, Cinema, and Performances: Francephobia explores the complex identity of the banlieusard within French society through literature, film and pop culture, such as rap music and stand-up comedy. The banlieue, known in English as the “inner city,” is home to underrepresented and marginalized descendants of North- and West- African immigrants as well as some white European immigrants or white French individuals. Established in tall housing estates located on the wider outskirts of Paris, the banlieue is a space constructed through the systemic disenfranchisement of working-class people across genders, ethnicities, and race and through associatio...
This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that delves beneath the media headlines about the “migration crisis”, Brexit, Trump and similar events and spectacles that have been linked to the intensification and proliferation of stereotypes about migrants since 2015. Topics include the representations of migration and stereotypes in citizenship ceremonies and culinary traditions, law and literature, and public history and performance. Bringing together academics in the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as artists and theatre practitioners, the collection equips readers with new methodologies, keywords and collaborative research tools to support critical inquiry and public-facing research in fields such as Theatre and Performance Studies, Cultural and Migration Studies, and Applied Theatre and History.
ReFocus: The Films of Rachid Bouchareb is the first book-length study of the internationally recognized director's films. Bouchareb was one of France's first filmmakers of North African descent and his career as a director and producer now spans over 35 years. Remarkably varied in their themes, formal elements and narrative settings, Bouchareb's work has engaged with and reflected on a variety of crucial social, political and historical issues; from the role of colonial troops in the French army during the Second World War, to terrorism in contemporary Europe. This volume examines Bouchareb's films from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring key influences on his output and considering new theoretical approaches to his filmmaking.
Whenever political and social decisions use categories of identity such as race, religion, social class, or nationality to distinguish groups of people, they risk holding certain groups as inferior and culturally “Other.” When people employ ideologies of imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, and classism, they position certain groups as superior or ideal/ized people. Such ideological positioning causes nations to take actions that isolate or endanger minoritized populations. This cultural Othering can lead to atrocities such as Native Americans being expelled from their native lands through the Trail of Tears, millions of Ukrainians starving to death during the Holodomor, or millions of ...
The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France explains the causes of twenty-first-century global migrations and their impact on French literature and the French literary establishment. A marginal genre in 1980s France, since the turn of the century “migrant literature” has become central to criticism and publishing. Oana Sabo addresses previously unanswered questions about the proliferation of contemporary migrant texts and their shifting themes and forms, mechanisms of literary legitimation, and notions of critical and commercial achievement. Through close readings of novels (by Mathias Énard, Milan Kundera, Dany Laferrière, Henri Lopès, Andreï Makine, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Ali...
This book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the cinematic representations of the experiences of African women and girls in situations of political conflict. The role of cinema is important in providing information about the situation of women and girls in situations of political conflict, and the main characters often also become signifiers of wider social, political and economic ideas, at both global and local levels. Drawing on fictional and biographical cinematic representations, this book considers films covering a range of different regions, experiences, historical periods and other contexts, to draw a nuanced picture of African women and girls who participate in or are affec...