2017 Modern Languages and Literatures Publications and Grants

Aïtel, Fazia. “Des images pour le dire : périple au cœur du silence algérien dans Le Repenti de Merzak Allouache” CELAAN. vol. XIV, no. 2-3, 2017.

Abstract: The article analyzes Algerian film by Merzak Allouache, Le Repenti, which is set during the Algerian civil war and portrays the quest of a couple to find the grave of their child assassinated by the Islamists. In the article, I discuss the following questions: the historical and political framework of the film and its place in the recent Algerian film production, the role and function of the characters in their attempt to reclaim the experience of the Algerian trauma, and the role of silence and ambiguity in the film.

External Grant: Aïtel, Fazia. ASMEA (Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa) Research Grant. April 2017.

My research focused on women and feminism in contemporary Algeria and the contradictions inherent to being a feminist and an Amazigh militant in today's Algeria.

Frangieh, Bassam. “Fayturi Muhammad.” The Encyclopedia of Islam, third edition, Brill, 2017, pp. 65-66.

Abstract: Life and achievements of the poet Muhammad Al-Fayturi.

Valencia, Norman. The Rhetorics of Power and the Names of the Father in Latin American Literature. Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2017.

Abstract: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the return of democracy to most of its countries, Latin America awaited the end of one of its key historical figures: the authoritarian and paternalistic leader. With the 21st century, however, the "father of the nation" returned like a specter to the continent's public sphere. In an attempt to think about the history and the contemporary relevance of this figure, this text provides a political reading of the father in some of the most representative Latin American authors of the 20th century: Graciliano Ramos (Brazil), Juan Rulfo (Mexico), Joao Guimaraes Rosa (Brazil) and Jose Lezama Lima (Cuba). With a theoretical framework that combines psychoanalysis with thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, my book focuses on the father as a rhetorical locus for the representation of some of Latin America's key historical problems, including the paternalistic nature of its modernization, the permanent return of totalitarian leaders to its public sphere, and the ambiguous role it played in the global expansion of capitalism throughout the 20th century. Additionally, the book discusses the need for more comparative approaches between Latin America's Spanish and Portuguese traditions, in order to produce a better understanding of the continent's history and culture.

Valencia, Norman. “Think Less and Publish More.” Review of Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship, by Lindsay Waters. Revista Contraportada, vol. 1, issue 1, 2017, pp. 116-123.

Velazco, Salvador. “(Des) Colonialidad del Poder en 13 Pueblos en Defensa del Agua, el Aire y la Tierra.” Catedral Tomada, vol. 5, no. 9, 2017, pp. 22-44.