Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives
Global Middle East Studies Working Group
April 11, 2024
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location
101 Taft Hall
Address
UIC Arab American Cultural Center, 826 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
Download iCal FileThis event will feature Dr. Mejdulene Shomali for a discussion about her new book, "Between Banat Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives" (Duke University Press, 2023). In "Between Banat", Mejdulene Bernard Shomali examines homoeroticism and nonnormative sexualities between Arab women in transnational Arab literature, art, and film. Moving from The Thousand and One Nights and the Golden Era of Egyptian cinema to contemporary novels, autobiographical writing, and prints and graphic novels that imagine queer Arab futures, Shomali uses what she calls queer Arab critique to locate queer desire amid heteronormative imperatives.
Dr. Mejdulene Bernard Shomali is a queer Palestinian poet and an associate professor in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she is also the program coordinator for Arab and Muslim American Studies. Her poetry can be read in Copper Nickel, Tinderbox, Diode Press, The Pinch Journal, Mizna, and elsewhere. She has published articles in Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the US, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and several edited collections. Her first book, "Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives" is available from Duke University Press. Her poetry chapbook “agriculture of grief: prayers for my father’s dementia” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (August 2024).
Co-sponsored by UIC Gender and Women's Studies, Arab American Cultural Center, Global Middle East Studies Working Group, and Gender and Sexuality Center.
Date posted
Jan 16, 2024
Date updated
Feb 22, 2024