My work focuses on the recovery of May Ziadeh, an overlooked Lebanese-Palestinian writer and literary salon hostess from the early twentieth century. I aim to briefly highlight Ziadeh’s significant contributions to al-Nahda movement, or the Arab Renaissance, while also revisiting and challenging the narrative of madness associated with Ziadeh’s name. I do so through looking at Ziadeh's newly discovered manuscript, the Nights of Isis Copia, which she wrote during her stay at the mental asylum in Lebanon, Asfuriyyah. I read this manuscript as a literary text that invites us today to revisit and question Nahdah as an often glorified and celebrated movement, opening the possibility for reading marginal(ized) texts that can offer new trajectories of its history. My synthesis of Ziadeh's manuscript as a counter-narrative of the Nahḍa movement is a first in the field, it derives from the practice of close reading and responds to Scott Deuachar and El Ariss’s call for possibilities of new approaches to understanding the Nahḍa period and its intellectuals. The notion of unstable models finds resonance in Ziadeh’s manuscript on many levels, to mention but a few: the nature of the manuscript, its genre(s), location and time of its writing in 1940s which is very different from that of its finding and publishing in 2017, as well as the judgement of the mental and social status of its writer. Altogether, this approach brings me back to my main research question also highlighted in my presentation’s title: Rereading Nahdah through Marginalized Narratives.

Syrian women writers have presented new perspectives and identity transitions through their novels depicting the wars in Lebanon and Syria, experiences they themselves endured. Particularly noteworthy are the works of Ghada al-Samman (1942-), who witnessed the Lebanese Civil War, and Samar Yazbek (1970-), who has faced the Syrian war since 2012, revealing the parallels in their struggles and the differences in their historical contexts. Al-Samman, one of the leading writers in Arab literature during the late 1960s, belongs to the second generation of Syrian women writers. Like her contemporaries who were disillusioned by the 1967 defeat, she depicted the intricate interplay of tradition and sexual repression in Arab society through novels such as Beirut 75 and Beirut Nightmare. In these novels, she layered the contradictions of class disparities, corruption in Arab political world, conflict with Israel, and people’s apathy toward it, alongside the personal tragedies engulfing Arab women. Samar Yazbek, on the other hand, represents the third generation, which rose to prominence in the 2000s. After showcasing her talent as a feminist novelist through works such as Cinnamon, she became actively involved in the popular uprising post-2011. Amidst the global scrutiny of the complexities of the Syria crisis, Yazbek positioned herself at the center of storytelling in her literary narratives such as A Woman in the Crossfire and The Crossing, opting for a more documentary-style approach over fictionalization, ensuring the authenticity of the revolution. Both novelists gravitated toward a gendered revolution while critically depicting the double standards prevalent in male-dominated societies (such as the distinction between a woman in a relationship and one who is a marital partner). They also shared a common goal of promoting coexistence among different religious beliefs and worldviews in society, yet both ultimately faced exile. However, while al-Samman was steeped in the ethos of the “Arab cause,” Yazbek belonged to a generation which, under the harsh oppression of the Assad regime, was acutely aware of its Syrian identity and more driven to restore their relationship with the homeland. A comparative study of these writers, who grappled with the subject of war, will further elucidate the complex identity shifts experienced by Syrian women across two generations.

The concept of voice symbolizes notions of power and authority within discourse, where the crafting of narratives is intricately intertwined with the generation of it. In her Confession of the Woman Doctor (Iʻtirāfāt al-Ṭabībah), Saudi Arabian female writer Qumāshah al-ʻAlyān employs dual rhetoric and overturns the narrative hegemony dominated by male writers throughout history. She combines internal focalization and first-person narratives with the personal voice in her story, adeptly employing narrative techniques to delve into the intricate psychology of a Saudi Arabian woman doctor who eventually committed suicide. Within Confession, al-ʻAlyān exposes the specific details of female vulnerability by manipulating the surface text, implicitly revealing a reliance on hegemonic discourse. Through flexible use of surface text and subtext, both within and outside the story, al-ʻAlyān achieves a hidden resistance in a way that is imperceptible yet more suitable to the Saudi Arabian context in regard to censorship and potential persecution. Confession, authored by a woman raised in a conservative family, draws inspiration from the legacy of female pioneers in the Guelf region, who have molded feminine identities through their literary works in the 21st century. It is fueled by the distinctive experiences of women, aimed at a broad female audience, and committed to fostering women’s liberation in Saudi Arabia. This paper analyzes the diverse narrative techniques employed by al-ʻAlyān from the perspective of narrators and narratees and argues that Confession embodies a manifestation of Hélène Cixous’s concept of “women’s writing.” Drawing upon feminist narratology and a variety of critical theories, this paper sheds light on how al-ʻAlyān skillfully facilitates the emergence of a novel discourse esoterically surrounding female authority and female subjectivity through mimicking patriarchal structures and creating parallax between different narratees within the context of writing.

Despite the traditional mistrust against autobiographies as critical documents, more historical theories have validated autobiographical accounts for their value in understanding the past and accessing it. For this reason, autobiographies stand out from the archive of early modern Iranian women's writings for providing information about a difficult-to-access aspect of the history of Iranian modernity. The existing scholarship on these autobiographies primarily focuses on their utility in understanding the largely unrecorded history of Iranian women's private lives and the constraints faced by the authors in using the self-revealing genre of autobiography given the sociocultural demarcations between private (andarūnī) and public (bīrūnī) spheres. This perspective, however, narrowly construes the potential that these life stories offer for the imagined future of Iranian women. This research examines early twentieth-century autobiographies by Iranian women, moving beyond societal and literary constraints, to focus on their imaginative visions for the future. It delves into how these narratives transcend mere historical recounting and reveals the authors' aspirations for change for women in the future within the context of their time and the limits of the applied genre. To do so, two important autobiographical accounts, Memories of Tāj-al-Saltanih (1924) and selected autobiographical poems by Zhālih Qā’im-Maqāmī composed between 1910 and 1930, will be examined. Tāj’s autobiography is regarded as "the only one so far by an insider" of the royal court, and Zhālih’s poetry, while regarded as a highly personal collection, derives its forces from imagination and offers a speculative future for Iranian women. Drawing on Gil Hochberg's concept of the potential of an imagined future within the past archive, this study approaches these autobiographies as a space where authors reflected on their present and actively engaged readers in the potential of a yet-to-come future, bridging the gap between current limitations and future aspirations. This alternative interpretation attempts to address the question of why these life stories should not be read solely concerning the constraints of their genre and their utility to access the history of Iranian modernity but with closer attention to the better and different future they imagined for Iranian women.

Marjane Satrapi’s black-and-white coming-of-age autobiographical animated film Persepolis has been acclaimed mainly for its anti-stereotypical image of Iran and Iranians. However, there is a lack of scholarly works that acknowledge the movie’s depiction of Iranian women’s resistance to patriarchal power. This presentation will focus on the elements of film language, including narrative form and mise-en-scene, to investigate the different ways the film portrays Iranian women striving for agency, freedom, emancipation, and resisting gender-based discrimination and injustice. By focusing on the three leading female characters (Marjane, her mother, and her grandmother), the paper argues that in Persepolis, women are depicted as political agents who fight for their rights as individuals and as a community. I specifically look at three areas: First, I examine the female body as a site of resistance. Second, I investigate the film’s critique of the compulsory hijab law under the Islamic Republic, embodied in its institutionalized oppression enforced through the police system and religious surveillance in schools and universities. Finally, I discuss the concept of women’s solidarity in the film as a missing piece that can help Iranian women thrive in the patriarchal culture. Demonstrating these unique characteristics of Satrapi’s film makes this study valuable. Most existing films about Iranian women—even those made by Iranian feminist filmmakers—portray women as victims of the circumstances enforced by men in power. In contrast, this paper argues that Persepolis offers an alternative, truthful image that portrays women as active agents who can make decisions for themselves and act against patriarchal rules.