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Full-Text Articles in African Languages and Societies

Songs Of Passage And Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’S Stories In Performance, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro Oct 2016

Songs Of Passage And Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’S Stories In Performance, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In this time and on this page, Spivak's island seems an apt place to begin a discussion about storytelling, resistance, and belonging. This chapter documents a conversation originating from two disciplinary perspectives-literature (Ferraro) and music (Dolp). We explore how spoken-word performance in a global context can facilitate social empowerment, craft a cultural past, and invigorate political consciousness. Although our analytical strategies and some of our conclusions differ, we share the assertion that the notion of artistic citizenship as it is defined elsewhere in this collection is considerably complicated, and even requires redefinition, in the context of non-Western cultures. Our present …


Casting Sound: Modality And Poetics In Gabriella Ghermandi’S Regina Di Fiori E Di Perle, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro Jan 2016

Casting Sound: Modality And Poetics In Gabriella Ghermandi’S Regina Di Fiori E Di Perle, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first considers music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi’s characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the …


The Moudawana Syndrome: Gender Trouble In Contemporary Morocco, Jimia Boutouba Apr 2014

The Moudawana Syndrome: Gender Trouble In Contemporary Morocco, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

The present article examines the way Zakia Tahiri’s film Number One (2009) foregrounds a renewed understanding of gender and gender relations in contemporary Morocco, especially in the wake of the New Family Code Reform (Moudawana), which has revolutionized women’s status by increasing their power in the private as well as the public spheres. It centers not on the oft-studied subject of women and the regulation of femininity in Arab countries, but on the complex relationship between masculinity and performance, highlighting the sociocultural norms that have shaped and affected the performance of masculinity in Arabo-Muslim contexts. In particular, this study examines …