Arabic Language and Literature Commons^™

Shahrazad In Appalachia: Surviving Violence Through Stories And The Support Of “Sisters”, Kaitlyn Hill

Undergraduate Honors Theses

When women are lured away from home, they become vulnerable and cannot survive the violence inflicted upon them by their ‘lovers.’ This thesis explores the ties between two distinct cultural regions, Arabic and Appalachian, to examine the violence against women and what allows these women to escape such situations by using Hanan al-Shaykh’s One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling and three traditional Appalachian murdered girl ballads.

Many of the women in these stories die at the hands of their ‘lovers,’ regardless of their culture of origin. Once removed from their fellow women, they lack a support system that would …

The Hope Of Salman Masalha: Re-Territorializing Hebrew, Yael Dekel, Eran Tzelgov

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Israeli poetry can be depicted as a triangle composed of three elements: territory (the State of Israel); language (Hebrew); and identity (Jewish). In his Hebrew collection of poetry Eḥad Mikan (in place, 2004), Salman Masalha—a bilingual author publishing in both Arabic and Hebrew—challenges this interrelation of territory, language and identity. The debate between the literary scholars Hannan Hever and Reuven Snir explore the central expressions of this challenge. For it points, on the one hand, to the subversive potential of such work towards the Israeli canon while, on the other hand, to its connection to Arabic literature. Writing in the …

The Case For Early Arabia And Arabic Language: A Reply To The New Arabia Theory By Ahmad Al-Jallad, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

A reply to an article published on May 23rd, 2018, in The New Yorker magazine by Elias Muhanna, titled A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone, introducing a new theory by Ahmad al-Jallad, a Harvard trained scholar of ancient Near East languages and scripts, asserting that the Arabic language (and presumably the Arabs) was originated in the south Levant desert and migrated southward. This theory would reverse the established conclusions set forth by the esteemed work of numerous Islamic Arab linguists and historians, over more than a thousand years, who believed the Arabs and the Arabic language originated in …

Cross Language Information Transfer Between Modern Standard Arabic And Its Dialects – A Framework For Automatic Speech Recognition System Language Model, Tiba Zaki Abdulhameed

Dissertations

Significant advances have been made with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) applications. Yet, dialectal conversation ASR is still trailing behind due to limited language resources. As is the case in most cultures, the formal Modern Standard Arabic language is not used in daily life. Instead, varieties of regional dialects are spoken, which creates a dire need to address dialect ASR systems. Processing MSA language naturally poses considerable challenges that are passed on to the processing of its derived dialects. In dialects, many words have gradually morphed from MSA pronunciations and at many times have different usages. Also, …

Islam, Democracy, And The Leadership Role Of Women In Government, Leea Collard

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between Islam, democratic government, and the governmental leadership of women in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT). In order to understand female leadership in this region, the compatibility between Islam and democracy is analyzed. This occurs through the examination of Sharia Law and democratic principles within Islam. Furthermore, a statistical analysis of the successes of democracies in the region will be presented. Each nation will be categorized by the constitutional provisions entrusted to its female citizens. Thus, this thesis will present the legality of the political participation of women in each of the …

Analysis Of Arabic Collocation In The Work Of “Kysasi Rabghuzi”, Dilfuza Sagdullaeva

The Light of Islam

This article is the first analysis of the syntactic study of the Arabic compounds used in the book “Qisasi Rabghuzi”, which is the first example of Uzbek classical literature written in Turkish language and based on Islamic sources. The book uses a number of Arabic compounds and consists of words and phrases. The method of making Arabic compounds in the work and the determination of their status in the Turkic language is important in studying the history of Uzbek linguistics and Arabic studies. In the vocabulary of the language, many syntactic vocabulary units are formed, and because this method of …

واقع النحو العربي في ضوء محاولات تجديده في العصر الحديث, مأمون سليمان محمد الغنام

Dissertations

الشكوى من صعوبةِ قواعدِ اللغة العربية قديمة وحديثة، ولكنَّها زادت في العصر الحديث، على نحوٍ يجعلُ من مادة النَّحو مادةً عسيرةَ الفهم صعبةَ التحصيل؛ ولهذا سعت كثيرٌ من محاولات تجديد النَّحو إلى تذليلِ صعوباتِه وتجاوزِ عقباته قديماً وحديثاً، ولكنَّ هذه المحاولات كثُرت في العصرِ الحديث كثرةً مبالغا فيها، وتنوعت مناهجها بين داعٍ إلى إعادةِ تقديمِ قواعد النَّحو بأساليبَ حديثة، مع ضرورةِ التخفُّفِ من القواعدِ غيرِ المستخدمِ ة بالحذف والاختصا ر، وبين محاولات دعت إلى تغييرِ منهجِ النحوِ نفسه، واستبدال مناهج لغوية حديثة به، و بين محاولاتٍ دعتْ إلى هدمِ النَّحو العرب ي، واتخاذ اللهجاتِ بديلاً عنه في شتى شوؤن الحياة. …

الثقافة الفنية وأثرها في كفاءة الناقد الأدبي: نماذج نقدية منتقاة, رامي علي أحمد أبو عايشة

Dissertations

تعاينُ هذه الأطروحة مجالات الثقافة الفنية الواسعة التي منحت أصحابها مزيدًا من العمق والتصور، والقدرة على تذوق واكتشاف مواطن القوة والضعف في العمل الفني، أملًً في الكشف عن المكنونات العميقة للنصوص الإبداعية بعيدًا عن المباشرة والسطحية. كما تروم هذه الإطروحة الكشف عن إحاطة الناقد الأدبي بالفنون الجميلة ذات الصلة بالأدب في شكلها ومضمونها، وكيف يمكن لهذه الفنون أن تصبح عدّة معرفية وثقافية بيد الناقد تمكّنه من مساءلة الإبداع مساءلة منهجية جادة ذات أسس ومقاييس؟ وذلك من خلًل التدليل بنماذج نقدية منتقاة توصَّل أصحابها إلى آفاق نقدية جديدة في مجال المثاقفة الفنية مع سائر الفنون، الأمر الذي يدعو إلى البحث عن …

The Function Of Poetry In The Maqamat Al-Hariri, Hussam Almujalli

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Maqamat al-Hariri is one of the most notable examples of prose in Arabic literature. Called one of the most eloquent statements of medieval Arabic prose, it also serves as a religious, social, cultural, and political document of the Abbasid Caliphate. As a writer, al-Hariri became a famous figure in Arabic literature after writing his maqamat. This dissertation studies al-Hariri as a poet through his most important prose work, the Maqamat al-Hariri.

Chapter 1 of the dissertation provides an overview of the maqama genre, including its definition, themes, stylistic features, character types, a brief history of maqamat studies, …

Transitional Portraits: Syrian Immigrants Of The North American Mahjar In 'Abd Al-Masih Haddad's Prose, Benjamin Smith

Arabic Faculty Works

This article argues that the 1921 collection of diasporic short stories Hikayat al-mahjar, written by ‘Abd al-Masih Haddad, makes a unique and notable contribution to mahjar literature by mobilizing formal literary techniques and innovative thematic content to capture a Syrian immigrant community engaged in a transitional moment in America. This paper situates Haddad (best known as the founder of the biweekly Arabic newspaper al-Saʼih, and a founding member of the literary society al-Rābiṭa al-qalamiyya) among his literary peers and provides an analysis of Hikayat al-mahjar that demonstrates the work’s points of convergence and divergence from the literary norms of the …

Lost In Translation, Presumption, And Interpretation: Adam, Noah, And The Ancient Mesopotamian Mythology Of The Creation And The Flood, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

The common, biblical believes in an initial, single human creation, and a subsequent survival of a punishing, catastrophic flood were among the key forming pillars of the Near East monotheist religions. The other key pillar was, arguably, the belief in the existence of a one, supreme god and creator. However, neither the two stories of human creation and catastrophic flood, nor the belief in one supreme god, were originally introduced by these monotheist religions. Key inscriptions from ancient Mesopotamia have clearly indicated that various versions of these beliefs were commonplace for thousands of years before. Despite the differences in details, …

(M)Other Lands, (M)Other Tongues: Resistance To The Linear In Two Postcolonial Moroccan Texts, Julia Charra

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project focuses on French language novels by two Moroccan authors, Love in Two Languages by Abdelkebir Khatibi and With Downcast Eyes by Tahar Ben Jelloun. Both these novels were written in the 1980s. In Love in Two Languages, which is a novel with a deconstructed plot, the narrator deals with the struggles of having a French lover while being Moroccan, ie. from a country that was colonized by France, as well as his strained relationship with the French language. Ben Jelloun’s book, With Downcast Eyes, is about a young Moroccan girl who moves to France with her …

The Power Of Language: An Analysis Of Language Use And Attitudes In Moroccan Universities, Mikaela K. Thomas

Honors Theses

This study examines the connections between language use and attitudes in Moroccan universities. Morocco is a North African country that is historically multilingual, with communities speaking Moroccan Arabic (Darija), indigenous Amazigh, French, and English, in addition to the Standard Arabic used in government and by the Muslim community. The French Protectorate from 1912 to 1956 ushered in colonial language policies and imposed the French education system that enforced linguistic hierarchies. While the subsequent Arabization period attempted to reestablish the importance of Standard Arabic in Morocco, the policies failed to promote true multilingualism by ignoring the Amazigh and Darija languages. Today, …