Articles by Emily Drumsta
Journal of World Literature, 2023
This article examines two modern women poets' ambivalent engagements with Arabic elegy: the Iraqi... more This article examines two modern women poets' ambivalent engagements with Arabic elegy: the Iraqi Nazik al-Malaʾikah and the Egyptian Iman Mersal. Although they wrote in different national contexts and historical eras, with utterly distinct political and aesthetic projects, a close look at their verse reveals a specter of the bereft-yeteloquent "ancient Arab woman" haunting their respective poetic voices. Looking in particular at a conventionally metered and rhymed ode like al-Malaʾikah's "To My Late Aunt" (Ila ʿAmmati al-Rahilah) and at the quasi-elegiac threads woven through the prose poems in Mersal's 1992 collection, A Dark Corridor Suitable for Learning How to Dance (Mamarr Muʾtam Yuslah Li-Taʿallum al-Raqs) allows us to see how durable and omnipresent the woman-elegy association is in Arabic-surfacing everywhere from the heyday of Iraqi modernism, with its revaluation of conventional metrical forms, all the way through the unmetered, unrhymed experimentations of the "nineties generation" in Egypt.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2021
Among the many challenges facing Arabic literature in translation, the question of gender has his... more Among the many challenges facing Arabic literature in translation, the question of gender has historically been one of the most fraught, particularly as it presses upon Arab women writers. The persistence of Orientalist tropes such as the veil and the harem; the continual othering of the exotic and supposedly untranslatable East; the frequent
Research in African Literatures, 2019
This article offers a new reading of Driss Chraïbi's novel Une Enquěte au pays (1981), focusing i... more This article offers a new reading of Driss Chraïbi's novel Une Enquěte au pays (1981), focusing in particular on the term “enquěte” from its title. While the novel's protagonists do indeed conduct a police “investigation,” it quickly becomes clear that Chraïbi too is conducting a “search” in this novel—both for the autochthonous ways of being, knowing, and doing from which colonial education and French acculturation have severed him and for ways to expose and heal the wounds of Morocco's “Years of Lead.” Using theoretical texts by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Abdellatif Laâbi, and D. A. Miller, I argue that Enquěte repurposes the conventions of the roman policier to offer a critique of Enlightenment and its violent colonial and postcolonial aftermath. On the one hand, Chraïbi paints a fantastical portrait of autochthonous identity that remains illegible to state forms of knowing and control. On the other hand, he recognizes that, by prying into the minds of his supposedly unknowable Amazigh characters, the author too can become like the police.
Middle Eastern Literatures, 2016
This article traces the particular power that the poetic word retains in Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā’s 19... more This article traces the particular power that the poetic word retains in Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā’s 1978 novel Al-Baḥth ʿan Walīd Masʿūd (In Search of Walid Masoud), starting with its prologue, which in my reading constitutes a nasīb in prose. I argue that amidst the novel’s metafictional critique of intellectual and political discourse, poetry emerges as a contrapuntal, resistant realm where words do not mediate and obscure but rather constitute experience, transforming fleeting realities into permanent truths, loss into creation, and absence into presence. Poetry both persists and generates persistence in Walīd Masʿūd: its hyper-distilled language haunts the various narrators’ prose, while its form as lyrical address is shown to steel experience against the erasures not only of time and history, but also of exile and occupation—a particularly crucial imperative in the Palestinian context. The article thus nuances prevalent readings of this novel as a critique of the failures of Arab intellectuals in light of the 1967 defeat or Naksa.
This article addresses a critical inflection point in the history of the long War on Terror: Isra... more This article addresses a critical inflection point in the history of the long War on Terror: Israel’s 1992 deportation of over four hundred Palestinians to the “no-man’s-land” between Israel and Lebanon, and the camp that the deportees fashioned for the better part of one year to contest the legitimacy of Israeli colonialism and demand their return. The deportation—meant to incapacitate Islamic militant resistance to the US-brokered peace process between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization—paradoxically provided the conditions of possibility for conversation and collaboration among attorneys, doctors, professors, university students, and imams, which had heretofore been highly restricted and regulated by Israel’s carceral practices in the West Bank and Gaza. The deportees—those who in Giorgio Agamben’s estimation had been literally abandoned in a zone of indistinction—engaged in a political practice of “habitational resistance,” refusing their conversion into homines sacri by performing instead a mode of life that rendered multiple lines of transterritorial affiliation, self-assertion, and continuity. The deportees’ published archive—poetry, photobooks, autoethnographies—is understood as a technology of mediation that operates beyond the bounds of the prevailing Islamophobic and orientalist frames while also addressing Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The case of the deportees thus illuminates the articulation of race, religion, and war as it rubs against the linkage between settler colonial dispossession and the Westphalian trinity of nation, state, and territory.
Book Reviews by Emily Drumsta
Modernism/modernity, 2023
In December of 1976, a heated debate about Arabic poetry raged on the pages of the Times Literary... more In December of 1976, a heated debate about Arabic poetry raged on the pages of the Times Literary Supplement. It began as a book review. The work in question was British-Egyptian scholar M. M. Badawi's A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry. The review, "Under Western Eyes," was written by an up-and-coming Palestinian scholar named Edward Said. Said calls Badawi's method "remorselessly serial," his optic "not critical. .. but archival," his voice "more like a harassed cataloguer than a literary critic," and ultimately suggests, by not-sosubtle implication, that the product of Badawi's labor is "uninteresting" and "unsophisticated." 2 He claims that Badawi views "Arabic literature as something to be judged principally by Western literature, or by ideas about Western literature that were current a century ago" (Said, "Under Western Eyes," 1560). In a response published the next month, Badawi pointed out what he calls "errors of fact" in Said's analysis. He calls Said's reading of his book "hasty and careless" and chalks these M O D E R N I S M / m o d e r n i t y 422 problems up to Said's "obvious ignorance of the subject" of modern Arabic poetry. Charging that Said's "complaint" about the book's chronological framework is one "no Arab schoolboy would make," Badawi claims Said's review "casts doubt on his credentials, on his competence to judge such a book." 3 The exchange unfolded in a now-familiar cant: the younger scholar challenged the elder on questions of method and approach, while the older scholar marshaled "credentials" and "qualifications" to discredit his rival and shore up his own empire of expertise. What is most relevant for the purposes of this essay, however, is how Said and Badawi argue across disciplinary lines. Said, the comparatist, longs for close readings of Arabic poetry that might challenge the "categories, conceptual schemes, and metaphors which most critics of Western literature assume have a universal validity" and allow for "new critical formulations" ("Under Western Eyes," 1599). Badawi, meanwhile, is determined to die on the hill of area studies. His responses epitomize the old-school Arabist's allergy to what is now known as "theory." "Unlike Mr. Said," he writes, "I am not infatuated by the latest fashion, nor am I anxious to use the most up-to-date term, as if literary criticism was a branch of technology" ("Modern Arabic Poetry," 12). Although this debate seems to have passed largely unnoticed by scholars of modernism (perhaps because it was concerned with the oft-sidelined field of Arabic poetry), it is nevertheless remarkable how little things have changed in the fifty years since Said and Badawi came to rhetorical blows. Scholars of Arabic poetry still find themselves caught between the "plodding empiricism" of area studies and the clubby Eurocentrism of comparative literature, and the academic publishing market also reflects this dilemma. 4 Presses claiming to specialize in "literary studies" usually publish only on English, Anglophone, and European literatures, while those with specialties in "Middle Eastern studies" prefer historical and anthropological approaches to "the region," as it is called. When it comes to the Middle East, in other words, Anglo-American readers are usually presumed to be seeking information, not imagination. 5 Despite these constraints, three recent books offer new, very different, all refreshing takes on modern Arabic poetry. Robyn Creswell's City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut, Kevin Jones's The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq, and Huda Fakhreddine's The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice study very different archives yet continue to ask where exactly Arabic poetry belongs as a field of study (indeed, if it is a discrete field of study at all). Published in the Translation/Transnation series at Princeton University Press, edited by Emily Apter, City of Beginnings plants its flag squarely in comparative literature, while The Dangers of Poetry stands alongside other works of history in Stanford's reputable Middle East studies catalog. The Arabic Prose Poem, meanwhile, rounds out the Modern Arabic Literature series at Edinburgh University Press, now established as a niche-within-a-niche. Writing for English-language audiences about Arabic poetry, all of these scholars continue to face the same challenges Said outlined in his review of Badawi's book: the names of the poets they study are not only unfamiliar to their presumed readers, but also difficult to pronounce and thus easily forgotten; one cannot count on "any shared experience of style, idiom, form with one's audience"; and because of this unfamiliarity, one must constantly provide "short biographies, explanations of words, identification of traditions and conventions," "at the expense of more interesting things like prosodic analysis, elucidation of difficult passages," and so on (Said, "Under Western Eyes," 1559). The old and now nearly forgotten method war between Said and Badawi, in other words, still illuminates the difficulties facing Creswell, Jones, Fakhreddine, and others reshaping the field of Arabic studies today. Who reads Arabic poetry, and how do they read it? More importantly, why should an English-language academic and literary readership care about Arabic poetry? For his part, Jones attracts readers' interest by underscoring how central poetry and poets have always been to the modern social and political history of Iraq. The specificity of geographical and historical context, combined with the meticulous historical research Jones has done, make The Dangers of Poetry an excellent corrective to Badawi's disappointingly ahistorical book. 6 Key
IJMES, 2019
opposition activists by the security forces. Siavoshi shows how Montazeri's support for Hizbullah... more opposition activists by the security forces. Siavoshi shows how Montazeri's support for Hizbullah in Lebanon eventually brought him into confrontation with the more pragmatic approach of the rest of the establishment. As contacts between the Regan Administration and the Iranian leadership came close to opening the doors for a new era of relations, elements associated with Montazeri exposed the contacts to the media. As a result, the Iran-Contra ordeal began and a close relative of Montazeri was executed. Perhaps more importantly, Montazeri's takeover of Iran's prison system in 1985 and his confrontation with Khomeini over the prison massacre in the summer of 1988 point to his eventual downfall. In both cases, Montazeri stood by his principles, supporting likeminded movements and treating prisoners humanely. But it was the latter issue that put him on a collision course with Khomeini.
Translations by Emily Drumsta
The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala`ika is perhaps best known for the important role she played in the d... more The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala`ika is perhaps best known for the important role she played in the development and popularization of Arabic "free verse" (or taf`ila poetry) in the 1950s. After laying out the basic parameters of this new poetic form in the preface to her second collection of poetry, Fragments and Dust (Shazaya wa Ramad) in 1949, she later expanded her discussion of the topic in a critical text titled Issues in Contemporary Poetry (Qadaya al-shi`r al-mu`asir) (1962). While most of her best known poems, such as "Cholera" (al-Kulira) and "For Prayer and Revolution" (Li-l-salat wa-l-thawra), appeared in this later collection, "Revolt Against the Sun" (Thawra `ala al-shams) was published in an earlier collection titled The Woman in Love with Night (`Ashiqat al-layl) (1947). Critics have generally dismissed this earlier text as a purely romantic work preoccupied with the topics of melancholy and bittersweet beauty, but "Revolt Against the Sun" reveals a more complex dimension to the collection. Though it seems at first like a typically romantic meditation on the beauty of the night, the stars, and the power of poetic inspiration, al-Mala`ika`s use of political terminology (thawra, tamarrud, etc.) and her insistent, almost defiant tone ask that we read her assumption of the elegiac/nocturnal/melancholic position (stereotypical for women poets in the Arab tradition) as a distinctly political act. According to such a reading, "revolting" and "rebelling" against the sun imply the denunciation of male poetic hegemony and the relegation of women poets to the "mono-thematic" realm of the elegiac. In this poem, as in others from this collection, al-Mala`ika reclaims the (feminized) space of elegy in order to affirm a strong and willful poetic voice.]
Translation of "Ya Misr hanat wa banat" from Egyptian Arabic. In McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, I... more Translation of "Ya Misr hanat wa banat" from Egyptian Arabic. In McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 40, and in "Now That We Have Tasted Hope: Voices from the Arab Spring"
Essays & Interviews by Emily Drumsta
Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika is best known for the important role she played in the development a... more Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika is best known for the important role she played in the development and popularization of Arabic “free verse” (or taf’ila poetry) in the 1950s. But while she is well known as a pioneer, her verse itself is less well-known, and largely absent in translation. Emily Drumstra has translated one of al-Mala’ika’s poems for Jadaliyya, “Revolt Against the Sun,” and is currently at work on another translation. She talked about translating al-Mala’ika:
Arabic Literature (in English), 2018
There are several texts on teaching Arabic literature in translation, such as the one edited by M... more There are several texts on teaching Arabic literature in translation, such as the one edited by Michelle Hartman that’s coming later this year and the one edited by Muhsin al-Musawi and published in 2017. This, instead, will be a series of conversations around specific syllabi and teaching moments: in the classroom, through lecture series such as Tarjamat, through independent projects, or in other ways. Hopefully, the open nature of the series will allow for some comment and counter-comment; answer and question.
The first short conversation is with Emily Drumsta at Brown University, and it centers around her course, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World.”
As her course description notes, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World” takes a long view, including Arabophone women writers from the last millennium and a half:
This course examines the writing of Arab women from pre-Islamic times to the present. Over the course of the semester, we will read poems, novels, short stories, and critical tracts from numerous national contexts across the Middle East, including Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Tunisia. Beginning with a survey of pre-modern female literary personae in Arabic (the elegist, the mystic, the singing slave), we will move on to examine major figures in the early modern feminist movement, autobiography, film, and the novel. No Arabic required.
Although there are a number of other short stories, essays, and chapters giving critical context, beginning with Maya Mikdashi’s “How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East.”
Book Chapters by Emily Drumsta
The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation, 2019
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Articles by Emily Drumsta
Book Reviews by Emily Drumsta
Translations by Emily Drumsta
Essays & Interviews by Emily Drumsta
The first short conversation is with Emily Drumsta at Brown University, and it centers around her course, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World.”
As her course description notes, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World” takes a long view, including Arabophone women writers from the last millennium and a half:
This course examines the writing of Arab women from pre-Islamic times to the present. Over the course of the semester, we will read poems, novels, short stories, and critical tracts from numerous national contexts across the Middle East, including Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Tunisia. Beginning with a survey of pre-modern female literary personae in Arabic (the elegist, the mystic, the singing slave), we will move on to examine major figures in the early modern feminist movement, autobiography, film, and the novel. No Arabic required.
Although there are a number of other short stories, essays, and chapters giving critical context, beginning with Maya Mikdashi’s “How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East.”
Book Chapters by Emily Drumsta
The first short conversation is with Emily Drumsta at Brown University, and it centers around her course, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World.”
As her course description notes, “Women’s Writing in the Arab World” takes a long view, including Arabophone women writers from the last millennium and a half:
This course examines the writing of Arab women from pre-Islamic times to the present. Over the course of the semester, we will read poems, novels, short stories, and critical tracts from numerous national contexts across the Middle East, including Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Tunisia. Beginning with a survey of pre-modern female literary personae in Arabic (the elegist, the mystic, the singing slave), we will move on to examine major figures in the early modern feminist movement, autobiography, film, and the novel. No Arabic required.
Although there are a number of other short stories, essays, and chapters giving critical context, beginning with Maya Mikdashi’s “How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East.”