Defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as “the simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems,” glocalization is also a pervasive cultural phenomenon with important consequences in terms of cultural diffusion, erosion, and hybridization. The aim of this seminar is to explore such simultaneous manifestations of the global and the local within literary and cinematic texts by Arab and Anglophone Arab writers and filmmakers focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area. We invite submissions that look at the sociopolitical and aesthetic tenets of stories produced within multicultural and multilingual environments, explore glocality and the forces that have shaped the gobalized world we inhabit today, negotiate the conundrums of identity, and unsettle Euro-American approaches to the area and its people. Our purpose is to promote new, reciprocal ways of understanding the local through the prism of the global and delve into how processes of identity formation, adaptation, multiculturalism, and appropriation are negotiated in contemporary Arab and Anglophone Arab literature and film.  

Papers focusing on the topics highlighted below are welcome:

Arab authors winners of international literary awards
Films by Arab and/or Anglophone Arab filmmakers
Sites of memory in Arab literature and film
Arab migrant literature (exilic memoirs, immigrant fiction, autobiography)
Arab women writers and filmmakers
Rewritings of master narratives (Arabian Nights, Oriental tales, Frankenstein, etc.)
Processes of adaptation, imitation, (self-)Orientalization, and cultural translation in contemporary Arab and Anglophone Arab literature and film
Global influences on Arab literature/film and their impact on local identity formation
Impact of Arab literature/film on world literature/film