Apr 11 2024

Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives

April 11, 2024

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Location

Arab American Cultural Center

Address

Taft Hall 101, Select

Calendar

Download iCal File

Image ID: Flier has lavender background with a large black box with text in lavender, yellow and gray. A photograph of the author is in the top right-hand side in black and white of a person with long black hair wearing glasses and speaking into a microphone. The book cover image is in the bottom right with a graphic drawing of two people facing away from the reader with long hair, one black and one purple, and colorful clothes; they are looking at a number of buildings with windows in yellow and purple; one person is holding a cigarette in their hand whose smoke constitute of a speech bubble above their heads with the title of the book. Logos of co-sponsoring entities are on the bottom.

Join us at the Arab American Cultural Center for a book talk and discussion with Dr. Mejdulene Bernard Shomali about her new book, Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives (Duke University Press, 2023). In Between Banat, Shomali examines homoeroticism and nonnormative sexualities between Arab women in transnational Arab literature, art and film. Moving from One Thousand and One Nights and the Golden Era of Egyptian cinema to contemporary novels, autobiographical writing, prints and graphic novels that imagine queer Arab futures, Shomali uses what she calls queer Arab critique to locate queer desire amid heteronormative imperatives.

Dr. Shomali is a queer Palestinian poet and an associate professor in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she is also the program coordinator for Arab and Muslim American Studies. Her poetry can be read in Copper Nickel, Tinderbox, Diode Press, The Pinch Journal, Mizna and elsewhere. She has published articles in Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the US, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies and several edited collections. Her first book, Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives, is available from Duke University Press. Her poetry chapbook agriculture of grief: prayers for my father’s dementia is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (August 2024).

This event is co-sponsored by the UIC Arab American Cultural Center, Institute for the Humanities, Global Middle East Studies Working Group and Gender and Sexuality Center.

Contact

UIC Arab American Cultural Center

arabamcc@uic.edu

Date posted

Feb 28, 2024

Date updated