2020

Kifah Hanna

  • Associate Professor
  • Trinity College, CT
Picture of Kifah Hanna

Project

Floating Sexualities in Contemporary Arabic Literature, Film, and Social Media

Program

LAC Burkhardt

Department

Language and Culture Studies

Location

For residence at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, at Columbia University during academic year 2020-2021

Abstract

This book presents an original study of non-normative sexualities during periods of political upheaval in the contemporary Arab Middle East. The conceptual innovation of “floating sexualities” allows a nuanced examination of non-normative sexualities as they travel across genres (literature, film, and social media) in relation to the lived realities of war and regional instability. The concept also facilitates a simultaneous analysis of local and global contexts and presumes a constitutive relationship between sexuality and the rise of new configurations of literary, artistic, and political narrative. "Floating Sexualities" urges the rethinking of the Arabic literary canon and the reconceptualization of contemporary Arab sexualities as malleable aesthetic and political formations.