Hania A.M. Nashef

Published: Jun 03, 2021 by Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: History, Literature, Middle East Studies, Area Studies

Israeli officials have long denied that rape was used as an instrument of war against Palestinians. Palestinian oral narratives have long been considered a poor alternative to historical research based on archives or written texts. My essay analyzes two fictionalized historical novels that are not only grounded in actual events but also depict incidents of rape, a subject that has long been silenced in Palestinian and Israeli narratives on the Nakba.

Published: Nov 24, 2020 by Prose Studies
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

In his introduction to Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh remarks that in spite of the great number of travelers to Palestine, travel literature, for the most part, willfully ignored the living experience and existence of the land’s inhabitants.The Biblical imagination, along with the orientalist gaze, informed the accounts. This vanishing homeland is a subject that dominates Shehadeh’s nonfiction narrative.

Published: Nov 11, 2020 by Quarterly Review of Film and Video
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Film and Video, Media and Cultural Studies, Middle East Studies, Art & Visual Culture

Often described as an open-air prison, the citizens of the Gaza Strip have long resisted a subaltern existence. Conditions in Gaza, and specifically since the Second Intifada of 2000, have increasingly worsened. A deafening silence by the world has resulted in a marked increase in documentaries. In these productions, Gazans convey their stories to the outside world and demand that their humanity is acknowledged.

Published: Oct 24, 2019 by Samuel Beckett Today / 2019 Aujourd’hui
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

In the Arab world, Beckett’s plays or their adaptations have not only been popular with audiences and directors but have also inspired other literary and media genres. The Beckettian wait itself has become synonymous with the condition of the Arab person. In this paper, I discuss how in times of war, migrations, and despair, performances of Beckett’s plays abound.

Published: Jun 06, 2018 by Film International
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Media and Cultural Studies

In this article, I discuss two films that narrate the coming of age stories of two young boys during times of war. Through the eyes of these boys, we see countries and cultures unfolding. The first film is Jordanian director, Naji Abu Nowar’s debut film, Theeb (2014), set in 1916 in what is now southern Jordan, and Mohammed Al-Daradji’s film, Son of Babylon (2009). In both films, we witness not only boyhood journeys but also stories of countries that are yet to emerge.

Published: May 22, 2018 by The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

In his address at the Madrid Peace Conference, the Head of the Palestinian Delegation challenged the persistent myth that has defined Palestinian existence for at least a century by saying: “For too long the Palestinian people have gone unheeded, silenced...we have been victimized by the myth of ‘a land without a people.’” Here, I look at Mahmoud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief and In the Presence of Absence, drawing on Edward W. Said’s After the Last Sky.

Published: Jan 25, 2018 by Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

I look at two voices that resist abstraction and invisibility, through an analysis of two texts that are concerned with issues of shrinking and imposed identity, Mahmoud Darwish's poem Mural and Raja Shehadeh’s in A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle.

Published: Dec 22, 2017 by Comparative Literature Studies
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

In the final pages of Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus and Saramago's A Caverna, the main protagonists flee to an unknown destination from their respective "utopias." Both allegorical novels expose the ills of two guarded and structured communities. Here, I compare how both authorities function under the pretext of creating the ideal world, which ultimately results in safeguarding their own interests, and consequently perpetuating the anesthetized existence of their citizens.

Published: Dec 10, 2017 by Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

Giorgio Agamben defines the sacred man or Homo Sacer as one who is not worthy of sacrifice. In modern times, banishment or banning by the law occurs when a state of exception is sanctioned by a totalitarian supremacy that suspends judicial power. Here, I discuss how the authorities in José Saramago’s Blindness and The Cave function within the law of exception, confining and defining space, and ultimately marking the Homo Sacer.

Published: Dec 30, 2016 by Prose Studies History, Theory, Criticism
Authors: Hania A.M. Nashef
Subjects: Literature

In the 2002 siege of Ramallah, a man asks an Israeli soldier storming his house, “Do you consider me a human being?” The quotation is from Raja Shehadeh’s When the Bulbul Stopped Singing. In 1987, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish published Memory for Forgetfulness, documenting the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut. The pervading question in both works is who is human. I argue how these texts provide a counter-narrative as they resist the Homo Sacer status.