UC Berkeley

This dissertation provides the first in-depth study of the Lebanese-American immigrant writer, journalist, and translator ‘Afīfa Karam (1883-1924), an important contributor to the nahḍa, the Arabic cultural renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Karam published three Arabic novels in New York City between 1906 and 1910, predating the publication of Haykal’s Zaynab (1914), which is widely credited as the first Arabic novel. This study challenges the dominant narrative of the evolution of the modern Arabic novel, and posits that Karam’s absence from the Arabic canon stems not only from her gender, but also from her deterritorialized status as a member of the mahjar (diasporic) community of Arabs living in North and South America.

An early voice calling attention to the situation of Arab women, Karam was a pivotal figure in the nascent women’s movement in the Arab world. At this embryonic stage of the Arabic novel’s development, Karam articulated a unique gendered theory of the genre that reflects her proto-feminist politics. Karam considered the novel as the most effective platform to reach women readers and a tool for women’s empowerment. An extended analysis of Karam’s three formative Arabic novels – Badī‘a wa-Fu’ād (Badi‘a and Fu’ad), Fāṭima al-Badawiyya (Fatima the Bedouin), and Ghādat ‘Amshīt (The Girl from ‘Amshit) – demonstrates their engagement with contemporary discourses of Westernization and womanhood prevalent within intellectual circles of the mashriq, or the Arab East. Ultimately, this study argues that Karam’s deterritorialized status and distance from the cultural center offered her a unique, hybrid perspective and liberating space for artistic creation. Karam’s stylistic innovations include experimentations in narrative time and structure, and the use of literary techniques such as dialogue and narrative polyphony, a major departure from the paternalistic, omniscient narrative voice that dominated the Arabic novel through the mid-20th century.

By reconceptualizing the nahḍa as a transnational phenomenon – and highlighting the vital role played by women and mahjar writers in ushering in the modern age in Arabic letters – this study contributes to the expanding palette of scholarly interventions that are refining and reshaping our understanding of a formative period of modern Arabic literary history.