Improvising Happiness

2019 ◽  
pp. 478-494
Author(s):  
Barbara Sellers-Young
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Belly Dance ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Aesthetic Principle

Solo improvisational dance forms from North Africa and the Middle East, most commonly referred to as belly dance, have their roots in community celebrations in which dancers improvise to the accompaniment of a diverse set of local instruments. The movement vocabulary of these forms became part of popular global discourse in the twentieth century through the inclusion of the dances at transnational fairs. Later belly dance was adopted as part of dance studios and recreational centres in small towns and major urban centres on all continents. Despite its global transmission and performance, belly dance has maintained improvisation as a core aesthetic principle.

She Came from Kasaba

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Modal Approach ◽  
History Of

As in Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) notion of ‘devoir de memoire’, this poem-piece, from a new series, uses the role of creation and imagination to strive to ‘re-activate and re-embody’ distant family/historical transcultural spaces and memories within the perspective of a dispersed history of a Middle-Eastern minority, the Sephardi/Jewish community. There is little awareness that Sephardi/Jewish communities were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using a multi-modal approach combining photography and poetry, this photo-poem series has for focus my female lineage. This piece evokes in particular the memory of my grandmother, encapsulating many points in history where persecution and displacement occurred across many social, political and linguistic borders.

Water governance benchmarking: concepts and approach framework as applied to Middle East and North Africa countries

Water Policy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 1121-1139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia De Stefano ◽  
Mark Svendsen ◽  
Mark Giordano ◽  
Brent S. Steel ◽  
Bridget Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Current Water ◽  
And Performance

The world water crisis is a crisis of governance, as has been aptly stated. Yet how does one solve a crisis of governance? Water governance comprises complex nested and interlocked sets of decisions about water. It is inherently political, and is ultimately the responsibility of national, regional and local governments, working with their own citizens and with each other, to make improvements. In this context, there is a critical need in nearly every country to assess whether current water governance structures and practices are suitable and are delivering the desired results and, if not, where they fall short. When such assessments are made regularly and for several countries, it is possible to compare water governance status and performance both among countries and in a single country over time. This paper presents an approach to establishing a system of benchmarking water governance from content analysis of official policy and legal documents and a stratified set of stakeholder opinion panels. The approach assesses both the functions involved in water governance and the processes employed in making decisions. Six countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Turkey and Yemen) comprise a case study to show how this approach works.

scholarly journals Why Islam (Properly Understood) Is the Solution

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Nader Hashemi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.  

Islamist Feminism: Constructing Gender Identities in Postcolonial Muslim Societies

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffry R. Halverson ◽  
Amy K. Way
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Unique Extension ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Independence Movements

AbstractThis article analyzes the emergence of female Islamist leaders in the Middle East and North Africa, and the glaring contradictions between their feminist views and their roles as political activists for the Islamic State. The two Islamist leaders who form the primary focus of this analysis are Zaynab al-Ghazali (d. 2005) of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Nadia Yassine of Morocco's Justice and Charity Society. Our analysis reveals the existence of “Islamistfeminism,” distinguished from broader secular-oriented Islamic feminism, as a logical, albeit unique, extension, and expression of Muslim anti-colonial discourse rooted in the intellectual currents of twentieth century independence movements that still resonate today.

scholarly journals Expectations and Realities in the Study of Enslavement in Muslim-Majority Societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-392
Author(s):  
Ehud R. Toldedano
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Global Understanding ◽  
Muslim Majority

The global understanding of enslavement owes a great deal to the efforts of scholars who research its history in non-Atlantic societies, including Muslim-majority ones. In recent years, the study of enslavement in the Middle East and North Africa has achieved a volume, a dynamic, and a maturity that make it one of the leading, cutting-edge subfields in studies encompassing that part of the globe. Reilly’s Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula is a worthy contribution to this growing literature, covering a significant lacuna in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arabia with extensive and often innovative research.

Men and the Happiness Dance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Sellers-Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Belly Dance ◽  
Feminine Identity ◽  
Definitive Role ◽  
Male Dancers

The solo improvisational forms of North Africa and the Middle East, most often referred to as belly dance, have played a definitive role in the global social imaginary of masculine and feminine identity. This essay looks at the life of three male dancers, Mahmoud Reda, John Compton, and Tito Seif, and the position they have played in their social and historical contexts in Egypt and the United States.

scholarly journals Individuality Lost, Fun Gained: Some Recurrent Motifs in Late Twentieth-Century Arabic and Turkish Novels

1970 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Stephan Guth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Western Country ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Alternative Description ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Recurrent Motifs ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Starting from an alternative description, based mainly on German literature, of what has come to be called ‘postmodernism’, the present study re-examines Arabic and Turkish novels from the 1980s and 1990s in the light of this description. It is argued that the descriptive categories developed on the basis of European texts also make sense for texts from the Middle East and North Africa, suggesting that the way life is perceived in these regions at the end of the twentieth century does not differ fundamentally from how it is experienced in a Western country − there is a global discursive community with similar outlooks on life on both sides, rather than a ‘clash of civilizations’. The alternative description also assigns many ‘postmodern’ features their place in a ‘structure of meaning’, which sheds some new light on the inner architecture of the period in question and on the function of the parts in a complementary whole.

Soundless Screams: Graffiti and Drawings in the Prisons of the Holy Office in Palermo

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-215
Author(s):  
Giovanna Fiume
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North Africa ◽  
International Community ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Judicial Proceedings ◽  
The Impact

The discovery of graffiti in the early years of the twentieth century by the folklorist Giuseppe Pitré left by prisoners of the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in Palermo has been followed by more extensive investigations in recent years. These images and words have added a concrete and particular dimension to Sicily’s position at the crossroads of the Mediterranean. As well as images of saints and naval battles are to be found inscriptions not only in Italian, Sicilian and Latin but also in English and Hebrew. This article cross references this visual and textual evidence with the relevant archives of the tribunal in order to provide a powerful microhistory of suffering and resilience in this most inhospitable of environments. The result adds a new dimension to our understanding of the prison’s organization, judicial proceedings and the impact of the inquisition on the lives and consciences of those people from all over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, who found themselves unwilling denizens of what must have been perhaps the most international community of prisoners in the early modern Christian world.

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