A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature | Refqa Abu-Remaileh

Refqa Abu-Remaileh joins us on This Is Not A Watermelon podcast to discuss the fascinating and crucial work she does through her digital project "Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature". We dive into the very nature of Palestinian literature, discussing how it is without a centralized nation state and the challenges this presents in understanding it, as well as the key role of magazines in its production. Refqa explains the concept of a "diaspora-homeland continuum" and what it means to historicize Palestinian literature. Finally, she shares the names of figures of Palestinian literary production that are often forgotten.
This episode was recorded on March 20th at 4:15pm Palestine time.
0:00 Introduction
1:15 “Country of Words - Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature”
9:12 Literary Diasporas - The Mahjar Period: 1880-1950
13:40 Palestine in the 19th Century Literary Imaginary
19:47 Literature Under British Occupation
23:20 After the Nakba: Triple Occupation
26:21 Golden Age in Exile 1967-1982
32:50 Salma Khadra Jayussi
37:18 Transnational Network of Cultural Production
42:03 Uncovering Literary Figures
50:36 Cyprus as a Literary Hub
55:36 Importance of Literary Magazines
58:15 Five Women to Look Up
1:01:55 Prison Literature
Refqa Abu-Remaileh is a professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Film at the Freie Universität Berlin's Arabic department, specializing in Palestinian literature and film. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project "PalREAD - Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present".
Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature is a digital-born project that retraces and remaps the global story of Palestinian literature in the 20th century, starting from the Arab world and going through Europe, North America, and Latin America. Sitting at the intersection of literary history, periodical studies, and digital humanities, Country of Words creates a digitally networked and multilocational literary history-a literary atlas enhanced. The virtual realm acts as the meeting place for the data and narrative fragments of this literature-in-motion, bringing together porous, interrupted, disconnected, and discontinuous fragments into an elastic, interconnected, and entangled literary history 👉 countryofwords.org/
Connect with Refqa 👉 refqapalread?lang=en
Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊 spoti.fi/47I59ns
Hosted by:
Mikey Muhanna 👉 mikey_mu?h...
FOLLOW & RATE THE AFIKRA PODCAST:
» Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
» Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/1UWCL1I...
» Anghami: play.anghami.com/podcast/1047...
THIS SERIES IS PART OF THE AFIKRA PODCAST NETWORK
Explore all episodes in this series: • This Is Not a Watermel...
ABOUT AFIKRA
afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region - past, present and future - through conversations driven by curiosity.
📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide afikra.com/chapters
🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly afikra.com/podcasts
⚡ Become a member: www.afikra.com/membership
🔗 Instagram: / afikra_
🔗 Facebook: / afikra.official
🔗 Twitter: / afikra
#Palestinian #Palestine #PalestinianLiterature

[@friendsofbaghdadmuseum9113]

So beautiful to hear how thorough, academic & exited is Refqa about her work and the Palestinian litterary repository! Thank you!

[@afikra]

You're very welcome! We also were intrigued by the massive body of work she has made available to the world :)

[@christopherbarake9395]

✨🫶🏽❤️