This research network is organized broadly around the question of how cultural productions in the literary and visual representations in the Middle East have attempted to engage with the social dimensions of traumatic histories of war and social conflict in the region. The questions at the heart of this project are: how are these historical and social experiences represented in cultural forms, and how do these representations come to inform social memorialization of these experiences?
Within the academy these questions have largely emerged from investigations of European memorializations of World War I and in ongoing debates over cultural representations of the Holocaust. Yet the issue of how socially-traumatic experiences in the Middle East are represented has perhaps not as yet been subjected to a significant level of critical attention. Events such as the Palestinian nakba, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran-Iraq war, or the Armenian genocide, all play important roles in articulating contemporary national and communal identities in different regional societies. Each of these events is subject to contestation and cooptation through their memorialization in a wide range of cultural practices and productions both in literary and visual registers.
This network is designed to engage broadly and comparatively with these and other traumatic histories with an aim to both develop this area of cultural and historical inquiry with relation to scholarship on the Middle East, as well as to contribute to the wider realms of scholarly activity on these themes as they concern other regions and histories. Participants are sought whose research touches upon literary or visual representations (including but not limited to cinema, painting, design, design of public space, commemorative architecture, etc) of any socially-traumatic context situated within the “Middle East” (broadly defined, including the societies of North Africa and West Asia).
This website will link to a private forum maintained for members of the research network, and will also maintain public content relating to research and publications of members of the network. For scholars and students wishing to learn more about this network, please email: kamran.rastegar@ed.ac.uk |
