The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East

Abstract

Develops a new ‘post/colonial’ model of Middle Eastern literary and cultural modernity

This Edinburgh Companion seeks to develop a postcolonial framework for addressing the Middle East. The first collection of essays on this subject, it assembles some of the world’s foremost postcolonialists to explore the critical, theoretical and disciplinary possibilities that inquiry into this region opens for postcolonial studies.

Throughout its twenty-four chapters, its focus is on literary and cultural critique. It draws on texts and contexts from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries as case studies, and deploys the concept of ‘post/colonial modernity’ to reveal the enduring impact of colonial and imperial power on the shaping of the region. And it covers a wide and significant range of political, social, and cultural issues in the Middle East during that period – including the heritage of Orientalism in the region; the roots and contemporary branches of the Israel–Palestine conflict; colonial history, state formation and cultures of resistance in Egypt, Turkey, the Maghreb and the wider Arab world; the clash of tradition and modernity in regional and transnational expressions of Islam; the politics of gender and sexuality in the Arab world; the ongoing crises in Libya, Iraq, Iran and Syria; the Arab Spring; and the Middle Eastern refugee crisis in Europe.

Key Features

• The first reference work to systematically investigate the relationship between postcolonial studies and the Middle East

• Brings together twenty-two of the world’s foremost postcolonialists in a unique collaborative endeavour

• Addresses some of the most significant political, social and cultural issues in the Middle East from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries

• Covers a wide range of forms and genres, including fiction, poetry, life-writing, film, documentary, pictorial art, performance art, popular music, graffiti, the digital media and translation

Contributors

• Sadia Abbas, Rutgers University, Newark

• Sinan Antoon, New York University

• Anna Ball, Nottingham Trent University

• Réda Bensmaïa, Brown University

• Anna Bernard, King’s College London

• Marilyn Booth, Oxford University

• Juan R. I. Cole, University of Michigan

• Miriam Cooke, Duke University

• Erdağ Göknar, Duke University

• Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State University

• Waïl S. Hassan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Ikram Masmoudi, University of Delaware

• Karim Mattar, University of Colorado at Boulder

• Lindsey Moore, Lancaster University

• Stephen Morton, University of Southampton

• Laetitia Nanquette, University of New South Wales, Sydney

• Tahia Abdel Nasser, American University in Cairo

• Wen-Chin Ouyang, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

• Caroline Rooney, University of Kent

• Ella Shohat, New York University

• Ahdaf Soueif is a novelist, translator, and political and cultural commentator

• Anastasia Valassopoulos, University of Manchester