My project provides a substantive, interdisciplinary ecocritical perspective on different forms of human and environmental violence and insecurities. I pursue this objective through a selection of contemporary and modern Arabic novels that reveal and connect different dimensions of real aspects of gendered, ecological, and political-religious violence. My project argues that the destruction of the environment in Arabic literature parallels and intersects with the violation of women’s bodies that both have marked recent real religious political conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria and Egypt. My project asks: (1) what is the systematic, interdependence between gendered and ecological violence and how does this interdependence advance ecocritical understandings of religious-political conflicts as reflected in Arabic literature? (2) How does the breadth of human and environmental violence and insecurities within various Arabic contexts develop ecocritical perspectives on Arabic literature and culture? (3) What are the underlying characteristics and additions of Arabic ecocriticism?
Project title: Gender and environmental violence in Arabic literature and culture: an ecocritical study
Area of research: Literature, ecocriticism, gender studies
Fellowship period: 1 Oct 2020 – 30 Sep 2023
Fellowship type: AIAS-COFUND II Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow
This fellowship has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 754513 and The Aarhus University Research Foundation.
