ABSTRACT Bedouin, Place, and Environment in Desert Literature A spate of contemporary Arab “desert novels--” including Sabri Moussa, Seeds of Corruption, and Ibrahim al-Koni, The Bleeding of the Stone-- depicts the desert dweller as an environmental/ cultural conservationist, a kind of “ecological Bedouin.” I argue that the novels suggest a strong link between the Bedouin sense of place and his caring for the natural environment. Unlike in many other novels, place is not used just as stage on which events occur or as a metaphor for human emotions; it is essential for the movement of the story itself, and the relationship of the protagonists to place is a primary preoccupation. “Sense of place” and equivalent constructs-- like “place-making,” “sense of self-in-place”—have been claimed in eco- (environmental) criticism other types of environmental literature outside the Middle East to be key mediators in environmental upkeep although, unlike the Bedouin, the researched communities are sedentary. The paper details through close reading of the novels how the Bedouin make sense of place by their physical and symbolic engagement with its animate and inanimate components including keen observation and tracking, establishing hunting rules, exchanging stories that happened in specific spots, naming wadis and mountains, and defending their domains against greedy intruders, thus embedding themselves in and becoming embodiments of place. The paper makes clear that the Bedouin’s desert places lie at the core of their identity and function as categories through which they comprehend the world; and that the Bedouin’s sense of place and attendant conservationist praxis are not just “conservation of resources,” but also means and ends sustaining their way of life, which they do not perceive as being separate from the natural environment. Our contention, buttressed by relatively recent anthropological field work, runs counter to long-standing imaginaries—colonial, scholarly, and urban Arab—of the Bedouin as environmentally destructive, who cared only for feeding their animals, and so did not take an interest in maintaining the ecological health of the spaces they roamed because they could always find new pastures. The argument is also salient beyond the academic study of the Bedouin in relation to the environment. It points to a method of understanding local environmental struggles throughout the region, and may even suggest that those advocating local environmental conservation could benefit greatly from awareness of the manner in which communities understand themselves in place. Words: 392

Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (1892-1997) is considered the pioneer of modern Persian story writing by the majority of literary critics inside and outside Iran. His prominent status is attributed to his emulating European forms of the short story and novel, and transferring their form into an Iranian context. Hassan Abedini calls Jamalzadeh the first Iranian author who combined methods of European story writing and Persian narration techniques, and produced modern Persian short stories (“Call for Return to the Past” 151). Homayoun Katouzian maintains that because Jamalzadeh lived in Europe most of his life, he was able to compare the Western modern institutions and thoughts with Iranian traditional culture and worldview, and consequently represent his critical and progressive views in the form and content of his stories. (“On Jamalzadeh and Studying Jamalzadeh” 186). And in view of Ebrahim Estaji, Jamalzadeh was the first Iranian writer who followed Western models of short story writing and poured Iranian prose into the mold of Western narration (“Jamalzadeh’s Place in Persian Story Writing” 307). Therefore, Jamalzadeh’s familiarity with Western culture and literature, his use of modern European narrative genres to represent contemporary sociopolitical issues, as well as his mastery of classical Persian poetic prose constitute the principal components of his modern literary artistry. Nonetheless, his works do not necessarily comprise a rupture with classical Persian narratives, but illustrate a continuation of them. Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s insights on “the literary chronotope,” the current study aims to demonstrate how Jamalzadeh’s rendition of the “chronotope of travel/ excursion/ journey” is connected to the narratives in Sa’di’s Gulistan (1258). In Bakhtin’s view, a chronotope refers to “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (84). He argues that the chronotope in literature has “an intrinsic generic significance,” thus defines “genre and generic distinctions”; moreover, the chronotope determines the “image of man in literature” as the image of man is “always intrinsically chronotopic” (85). This paper analyses Sa’di’s Golestan (1258) and Jamalzadeh’s most famous collection of short stories Once Upon a Time (1921) chronotopically in order to chart the generic affinities and disjunctures between the two. By comparing the chronotope of travel in these works, it aims to depict not only their literary styles but also the dominant conception of man in their respective eras.

The city of Haifa, which was majority Palestinian until its incorporation into the new state of Israel in 1948, an event that led to the flight of many of its Palestinian inhabitants, has retained a significant Palestinian minority population and has long functioned as both a cultural and political center of Arab life in Israel as well as a reminder of what was lost in 1948. This political and cultural history has of course shaped literary representations of Haifa over time. Many of these engage with the changing political and cultural topography of the city, from the strange new Hebrew names Ghassan Kanafani’s character encounters after 20 years of absence in Return to Haifa (1970), to Emile Habiby’s iconic novel The Pessoptimist (1973) in which the protagonist mistakenly believes that authorities in the new Jewish state have changed the name of his beloved city from “Haifa” to “Israel.” These depictions attest to the confusion, displacement, and alienation produced by a changing and newly hostile political, physical, and linguistic urban landscape. This presentation considers the relationship of Haifa’s literary-geographical heritage to a contemporary depiction of the cityscape, a 2012 novel by Ibtisam Azem entitled The Sleep Thief: A Haifa Stranger. This work depicts the estrangement experienced by its Arab inhabitants of Haifa, through its main character, who faces arrest and interrogation for an imagined crime. This character’s experience of estrangement is even inscribed in his name, Gharib Haifawi, the literal meaning of which is “a Haifa Stranger,” so chosen because his mother’s nostalgia for her home city. However, Azem’s novel also paradoxically uses this estranged relationship with Haifa to range beyond the borders of a particular neighborhood or even house that confined earlier works. I argue that she instead claims the entire city as her character’s domain, as he roams across the city’s beaches and mountains. I draw on writings about place and estrangement by Hoda Barakat, Michel Foucault, and Marc Auge to show that the pre-condition of estrangement – imposed upon Gharib from the moment of his birth – actually opens up the city’s many topographies to this character. This reading allows us to consider estrangement not simply as the expression of loss but also as a starting point for imagining modes of engagement with different types of spaces.

Theatre, a place of creation, has always inspired architects as an archetypal place of public involvement and emblematic revelation. Arby Ovanessian (1942– ), one of the most prominent and inspiring Iranian artists of the modern era who played a momentous role in the transformation of the Iranian cultural landscape, has offered a theatre that possesses profound architectural qualities and suggests a remarkable ground for architectural exploration. Ovanessian’s attempt to envision, perceive and extricate various characteristics and potentials embedded in the places, his quest and his ability in establishing a relationship between the qualities of the place and the features of the play performed in that place is thought-provoking. This paper focuses on his production of 'Vis and Ramin' at the 4th Shiraz Arts Festival (1970) (written by Mahin Tajaddod), one of his most influential creative work which initiated a new direction that opened a path to original research. Being performed largely without sets and props, 'Vis and Ramin', was staged at the ruins of Persepolis where the columns and statues of Persepolis formed a unique backdrop to the simple robe-clad actors. In the backdrop of ancient Persepolis, the perpetual lovers Vis and Ramin came to life and discovered each other once again. In return, one may say, 'Vis and Ramin' gave a new meaning to the stone engravings. Ovanessian made an impressive use of Persepolis as a stage: the appearance, moving and disappearance of the actors among the ruins, stairs and columns of Persepolis throughout the performance in connection with the changing daylight followed by the setting of the sun and motion of the stars in relation with the story and plot of the play presented an inseparable relationship between the theatre and architectural surroundings. The presence of fire in ‘mise en scène’, employed in the creation of artwork became intimately related to the place of performance: finding a close link with the presence of fire in Avestian concepts and Zoroastrianism. Through investigating 'Vis and Ramin', my approach in this paper is to propose a deeper understanding of the notion that in Ovanessian’s ‘world of theatre’, the spatial qualities of the place interweave profoundly with the plot, moods, stories and play itself and this relationship is crucial in transmitting the meaning and concepts. Architecture becomes an expressive element of ‘mise en scène’ and part of a ‘wholeness’ of the theatre creation.