Browsing by Author "Grewal, Sara"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Intra- and interlingual translation in Blackamerican Muslim hip hop
    (2013) Grewal, Sara
    The article explores elements of protest against white supremacy in Blackamerican Muslim hip hop music. Emphasis is given to the author's idea of intralingual translation between Hip Hop National Language and White Mainstream English in the music of artists such as Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco. Other topics include the role of scholarship in interpreting hip hop, the multiplicity of the English language, and the use of Arabic words and references to the Qur'an.
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    Testimony and the Urdu troposphere in Manto's 'Khol Do'
    (2019) Grewal, Sara
    While scholars of Partition frequently reference witnessing as a necessary frame for understanding Partition literature, and particularly the work of Saadat Hasan Manto, I analyse Manto’s short story ‘Khol Do’ (‘Open It’) to argue that the text’s use of Urdu-inflected tropology both deploys and exceeds the discourse of testimony. Through its turn toward magical realism in its devastating ending, ‘Khol Do’ demonstrates both the futility of attempting to definitively fix meaning in the context of unrelenting ambiguity, as well as the vital necessity of Urdu literature in constructing new communities of reading and interpretation in the wake of the ruptures of Partition.
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    The politics of gender in Azeri-Russophone literature
    (2020) Seyidova, Leyla; Grewal, Sara
    Sevinc Jafar’s novel Fakhriya (2018), first written in Russian and then translated by Javid Abbasov to Azeri, focuses on one Azeri woman’s experience during the Karabakh war (late 1980s-1994). The Karabakh war was an ethnic and territorial conflict in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh (backed by Armenia) and the Republic of Azerbaijan. During the Karabakh war, Armenian troops demonstrated horrific brutality, especially towards women, whom they brutally and sometimes publicly sexually assaulted (Isgandarova 176). In my thesis, I will argue that despite the cultural hegemony under Russian colonialism, women in Azerbaijan used the discourse of colonial modernity to transcend traditional gender roles. I will explore the ways in which colonial language politics implicitly inform constructions of gender in Soviet and independent Azerbaijan; indeed, the fact that Jafar’s work was written in Russian suggests that it remains the language of modernity in Azerbaijan. As I will show, Jafar uses Russian to express women’s experiences of sexual violence during the Karabakh war beyond the gender roles that dictate the limits of appropriate speech in Azeri.
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    The politics of gender in Azeri-Russophone literature
    (2020) Seyidova, Leyla; Grewal, Sara
    Sevinc Jafar’s novel Fakhriya (2018), first written in Russian and then translated by Javid Abbasov to Azeri, focuses on one Azeri woman’s experience during the Karabakh war (late 1980s-1994). The Karabakh war was an ethnic and territorial conflict in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh (backed by Armenia) and the Republic of Azerbaijan. During the Karabakh war, Armenian troops demonstrated horrific brutality, especially towards women, whom they brutally and sometimes publicly sexually assaulted (Isgandarova 176). In my thesis, I will argue that despite the cultural hegemony under Russian colonialism, women in Azerbaijan used the discourse of colonial modernity to transcend traditional gender roles. I will explore the ways in which colonial language politics implicitly inform constructions of gender in Soviet and independent Azerbaijan; indeed, the fact that Jafar’s work was written in Russian suggests that it remains the language of modernity in Azerbaijan. As I will show, Jafar uses Russian to express women’s experiences of sexual violence during the Karabakh war beyond the gender roles that dictate the limits of appropriate speech in Azeri.