Cosmopolitanism in Dubai’s Pan-Arab Drama

Pan-Arab dramas (Ar. al-drama al-ʿarabiyya al-mushtaraka) are a recent trend in Arabic drama series (Ar. musalsalat); they portray an ensemble of characters of various Arab nationalities in a transnational narrative setting. By considering transnational television a factor that contributes to the cosmopolitan imagination, and given the argument that Gulf cities are replacing historical Arab capitals and becoming ‘new centers’ for Arab culture, education and business, we explore the manner in which cosmopolitanism is represented in transnational Arab drama content. We do this through a case study of ‘04’ (Zero Four), a pan-Arab drama series that tells the story of four young expatriates of four Arab nationalities, experiencing their personal, professional and private lives in modern-day Dubai. We find that the boundaries of the cosmopolitan imagined community encompass the Arab world, resulting in a cosmopolitan imaginary that seems to favor Arabs over non-Arabs.

Creating a Gendered Transnational and Multigenerational Trauma Narrative in Márta Mészáros’s Film, Északi fény [‘Aurora Borealis’]

In this paper, Schwartz offers a gendered analysis of Mészáros’s most recent feature film [‘Aurora Borealis’]. She argues that the film presents a transnational narrative about repressed traumatic memories as they pertain to sexual and political violence dating back to the early 1950s. The film explores the effects of postmemory (Hirsch) through three generations across Hungary, Austria, Russia (the former Soviet Union), and present-day Spain. With the help of theories of trauma (Herman, Kaplan, Caruth, LaCapra) and through a close reading of the symbols and colors used in the film, Schwartz reflects on the healing potential of narrative recovery together with the role children born as a result of armed conflict can play in rethinking narratives of war and in exploring their own transnational bridge-building potential in the twenty-first century.

Prologue

The formation of the Indian middle class around the mid-nineteenth century and of policies of race-based U.S. immigration exclusion in the same time period bears some explanation, since these spatially distinct but temporally overlapping processes merged during the Cold War. The historical development of these eventually entwining, transnational narrative strands forms the substance of this prologue. Concentrating on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prologue provides the foundational context on which to build a narrative of postwar South Asian immigration to the United States. It provides historical context of the histories of anti-Asian immigration law in the United States and Indian immigration.

Salafism Goes Global

Salafism has emerged as one of the most visible and questioned faces in contemporary Islam. In many countries, from the East to the West, this fundamentalist vision seeking to restore a version of Islam that is supposed to be pure and unchanged is increasingly successful. This is the case in France, where thousands of Muslims are now dedicated to living this puritanical and fundamentalist religiosity. In connection with some Islamic countries, starting with Saudi Arabia, they appeal to a transnational narrative through which they promote a new face of globalization. Reacting to both political Islam and jihadism, they prefer to become entrepreneurs in order to seek economic success. Splitting from the rest of society, they are building a counternarrative in which they represent the purest form of the Islamic identity. Using research from a prolonged immersion in French Salafist communities, this book sheds light on the lifestyle, representations, profiles, and trajectories of these communities. By focusing on quietist Salafism and its formative ties with several Gulf countries, especially with Saudi Arabia, this book is also an attempt to understand contemporary religious globalizations. It also sheds light on a dynamic that is less centered on formal political entities and primarily refers to a globalization taking place in the margins that have been little studied for too long.

Position-in-frame

An integral connection point between the screenplay and reader/viewer is the protagonist’s transformative journey. The construction of this narrative backbone is critical to the articulation of overarching thematic concerns and story premise but also reflects the story creator’s worldview- one often coloured by representations of gender. The Hollywood model certainly divides narrative function along gender lines but does this representation hold true within a different cultural context? This article examines the selected screen stories of Danish director Susanne Bier whose partnership with screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen is one of Denmark’s most successful film partnerships. Employing a case study methodology I examine the dramatic function of and agency afforded screen characters and the critical dynamic between cultural landscape, practitioner preference and narrative inquiry. Key to this address is an exploration of mobility, legacy and sacrifice as textual considerations of gender and its utilisation as transnational narrative strategy.

Environmental Reporting in a Post Truth World

The science publication Nature Climate Change this year published a study demonstrating Earth this century warmed substantially less than computer-generated climate models predict. Unfortunately for public knowledge, such findings don’t appear in the news. Sea levels too have not been obeying the ‘grand transnational narrative’ of catastrophic global warming. Sea levels around Australia 2011–2012 were measured with the most significant drops in sea levels since measurements began. This phenomenon was due to rainfall over Central Australia, which filled vast inland lakes. It was not predicted in the models, nor was it reported in the news. The 2015–2016 El-Niño, a natural phenomenon, drove sea levels around Indonesia to low levels such that coral reefs were bleaching. The echo chamber of news repeatedly fails to report such phenomena and yet many studies continue to contradict mainstream news discourse. Whistle-blower Dr. John Bates exposed the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when it manipulated data to meet politically predetermined conclusions for the 2015 Paris (Climate) Agreement. This was not reported. Observational scientific analyses and their data sets continue to disagree with much of climate science modelling, and are beginning to suggest that some natural phenomena, which cause variability, may never be identified.

Northern Ireland’s 1968 at The Ulster Museum

In the dominant and increasingly prevalent transnational narrative of 1968, the case of Northern Ireland has been marginalised. As well as explaining how such an erroneous absence is to be understood, this article, through the example of an ongoing project at Belfast’s Ulster Museum, will argue that the current post-Troubles context provides fertile terrain for a recalibration of how this period is remembered from both within and without. It is concluded that such a project offers potentially valuable lessons for handling the difficult question of the past in Northern Ireland and beyond.

Weaving a Transnational Narrative: Yellow Woman and Orature in Almanac of the Dead

This article identifies parallels between Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller and Almanac of the Dead, focusing on the recurrence of Yellow Woman, a figure of Keresan orature. Yellow Woman embodies female sensuality and its potential to incite social or structural change within communities, and I argue that in Almanac, Silko employs textual reinterpretations of Yellow Woman to demonstrate the importance of cross-cultural, indigenous-led movements toward decolonization. Finally, I compare Almanac to the current Idle No More movement, noting their similarities as vast transnational, transindigenous, and even transracial campaigns that model beneficial Native and non-Native ally relationships within the struggle against colonial oppression.