Journal of Associated Graduates in Near Eastern Studies

Volume 14, 2020

Hard Times: Critical Approaches to Crisis and its Aftermath

Issue cover — *Cover Caption:*JAGNES is a peer-reviewed graduate journal and we are dedicated to publishing high-caliber creative and experimentalwork. We accept work from all Near Eastern disciplines, which include but are not limited to: Arabic Language and LiteraryStudies, Islamic Studies, Cuneiform (Assyriology and Sumerology), Hebrew, Biblical and Judaic Studies, Egyptology, EgyptianArt and Archaeology, Persian and Iranian Studies, Turkish, Hittitology, Comparative Semitics, Syro-Palestinian Art andArchaeology, and Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology.We offer through our online platform a chance for graduate students to broach new directions both in their field ofresearch and in the ways they approach publication. As graduate students ourselves, we understand the importance ofcreativity in our writing and presentations, and thus we want to encourage those students who want to work outside thestandard frames for academic writing, who want to widen the field of acceptable and considered approaches, and whoconsider their work to fall just between and among the various field-specific journals that exist, to submit to our journal. Funding provided by UC Berkeley Townsend Center Working GroupJAGNES is available online for free through eScholarship, the University of California’s Open Access publishing platform, at https://escholarship.org/uc/nes_jagnes

Just as past crises have occurred throughout history, our current era seems defined by itsown diverse conditions of adversity. From our perspective as students and scholars of the NearEast, hard times have become an uncritical staple of contemporary discourse regarding theMiddle East – the news often portrays the Middle East as a difficult place, defined by itshardships and catastrophes. In our call for papers, we emphasized that we were searching forresearch that complicates this narrative by considering it from a diverse array of criticalperspectives. The two papers published in our first re-issue, offer such perspectives.Rachel Winter’s contribution to this issue, “I Have a Story, Too: Suicide Bombers,Borders, & Peripheral Narratives” counterposes the narratives of suicide bombings constructedby the news media to those offered by the artists she examines. Winter diviersifies thisperspective further by looking into representations of female suicide bombers, and the differentgendered narratives that motivate thesir represntation in the media. She offers the archetypes thatpackage these suicide bombers, inflecting the Jungian archetypes with the mythical bent of the“Femle Monster” and “Woman Warrior.” What comes under scrutiny is not merely therepresentation of the suicide bomber by the artowrk, but also its framing. Winter asks, “What isthe viewer to make of the title, “Snow White”?” The fairytale is the framework around which thesuicide bomber can be made familiar to the audience and Winter’s paper puts pressure on thedesire to repackage the suicide bomber’s experience through a Western framework.1In his contribution, “Homebound Travelers: The Return's Destabilization of Homeland inArabic literature,” Shawheen Rezaei sheds light on the shattered perspective of “the return.” Inhis reading of the riḥ la Rezaei focuses on the way it disorients the traveler — both the characterand the reader. Rezaei’s article suggests that we consider how our perspective as readers issimilarly complicated in our reading of this genre. In the novels he examines, the question of thetraveler’s encounter with the other is nuanced both by the other that the traveler encountersabroad and the other that he encounters once he returns home. When the traveler returns as anoutsider, we are forced to question whether there can really be a return. Ultimately in askingwhat it means to return, the works that Rezaei readsforce us to consider if any return is possible.

Front Matter

Hard Times: Critical Approaches to Crisis and its Aftermath

Org, JAGNES

Editorial Letter

A letter from our Editors-in-Chief about the Volume and its contents.

Interviews

Hard Times: Critical Approaches to Crisis and its Aftermath: Interview

Rafi, Mohammad

Editors-in-chief, Brooke Norton and Lubna Safi sat down with fellow NES graduate student AriaFani to speak with our JAGNES 2019 Spring Lecture speaker, Mohammad Rafi about hisresearch, pedagogy, free speech, critical theory and more.

Articles

I Have a Story, Too: Suicide Bombers, Borders, & Peripheral Narratives

Winter, Rachel

Rachel Winter’s contribution to this issue, “I Have a Story, Too: Suicide Bombers,Borders, & Peripheral Narratives” counterposes the narratives of suicide bombings constructedby the news media to those offered by the artists she examines. Winter diviersifies thisperspective further by looking into representations of female suicide bombers, and the differentgendered narratives that motivate thesir represntation in the media. She offers the archetypes thatpackage these suicide bombers, inflecting the Jungian archetypes with the mythical bent of the“Femle Monster” and “Woman Warrior.” What comes under scrutiny is not merely therepresentation of the suicide bomber by the artowrk, but also its framing. Winter asks, “What isthe viewer to make of the title, “Snow White”?” The fairytale is the framework around which thesuicide bomber can be made familiar to the audience and Winter’s paper puts pressure on thedesire to repackage the suicide bomber’s experience through a Western framework.1

Homebound travelers: the return's destabilization of homeland in Arabic literature

Rezaei, Shawheen

In his contribution, “Homebound Travelers: The Return's Destabilization of Homeland inArabic literature,” Shawheen Rezaei sheds light on the shattered perspective of “the return.” Inhis reading of the riḥ la Rezaei focuses on the way it disorients the traveler — both the characterand the reader. Rezaei’s article suggests that we consider how our perspective as readers issimilarly complicated in our reading of this genre. In the novels he examines, the question of thetraveler’s encounter with the other is nuanced both by the other that the traveler encountersabroad and the other that he encounters once he returns home. When the traveler returns as anoutsider, we are forced to question whether there can really be a return. Ultimately in askingwhat it means to return, the works that Rezaei readsforce us to consider if any return is possible.