During the Lebanese Civil War, different pronunciations of the Arabic word for tomato, pronounced as either “bandora” or “banadora” depending on one’s dialect, became revelatory markers of political affiliation. In the context of that war, a wrongful pronunciation at an inopportune moment was a death sentence. This paper considers the question of linguistic authenticity by exploring the difference between translational failure and translational equivalence. Using Emily Apter's concept of translational failure, I consider how accent and dialect operate as markers of gender, class, nationality and political affiliation. In considering this question, I will look specifically at Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel Innaha Landan ya Azizi/Only in London in order to examine how accent and dialect function as mechanisms with which alterity is policed and managed in the post-civil war context of migration in the novel.

In May 1830, the Protestant missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (the ABCFM), returned to Beirut after a two-year sojourn on Malta. In order to revived their new social-religious community in late Ottoman Syria, the mission sought to establish a central space to base their work. Being foreigners and unable to rent property directly, they chose an unusual rental agent: the widowed, teenage convert, Susan (Sardis) Wortabet. The aim of my paper is to analyze Susan’s story and her “very peculiar trials” as a case study of gender and sexuality within the entangled histories of late Ottoman Syria. Many studies of missions focus on the “winners” or successful converts (religious or cultural), whose accomplishments are commemorated. In contrast, those applying structuralist views, such as the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, argue that cross-cultural encounters ruptured individuals’ identities, particularly those on the receiving end of missions, making them “mis-matched” to their indigenous society. More recently however, scholars have analyzed missions and colonial encounters as complex sites of both empowerment and marginalization, for which the new message was selectively received, appropriated, and/or rejected by the local communities. The aim of my study is to continue this recent trend by analyzing the ways that a specific cross-cultural encounter entwined with a functioning culture to provide both opportunities and hurdles for an individual. This will be done through an intersectional analysis of Susan Wortabet’s identity. At various points in her life in Sidon and Beirut, different elements of Susan’s identity were emphasized—in some instances offering her privilege, but mostly disempowerment. Tracing Susan’s “very peculiar trials” will not only illuminate a hitherto marginalized history, but it will also open up questions onto the construction of gender and sexuality (and their affiliated hierarchies) within cross-cultural encounters and the use of interdisciplinary theories and methodologies to investigate them. Is it possible to identify the terms for an intersectional analysis within a dynamic and ever-changing social space? How does one research a historical “matrix of domination” as experienced by the marginalized who left very few sources? What are the drawbacks and benefits of adapting intersectionality, a successful theoretical tool for feminist analysis within the social sciences, to the analysis of an entangled history?

Masculinity Studies remains an emerging field within Middle Eastern studies, especially in the discipline of history. The case study of Lebanon serves as a compelling example to adapt, refine and further approaches to Masculinity Studies, which has attained prominence in other research fields over the past twenty years, particularly those focused on the global North. Situated within this unfolding scholarship, my paper deconstructs the terms of masculinity that emerged in Lebanon during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on recently released archival material and private family papers, I contrast the lives of three Beiruti men of the early twentieth century: Alfred Sursock (1870-1924), an elite cosmopolitan, and Ottoman ambassador to Italy; Vahan Kalbian (1887-1968), an Armenian medical student at the Syrian Protestant College; and Muhammad Bakr (1894-1973), a Shia’ born, Sunni raised, Iranian-Beiruti journalist. These case studies serve as evidence of an entanglement of identity between men who would otherwise be categorized as carrying distinctly different identities based on sect or ethnicity (for example, a Catholic Melkite, an Armenian and a Sunni). To grasp this entanglement effectively, I move away from established approaches in Masculinity Studies (such as hegemonic masculinities and tendencies to focus on male characteristics) by investigating the intersections and divergences in social dynamics such as class, race, religion and even age. I argue that employing innovative historical methods, such as histoire croisée, or adapting interdisciplinary methods, such as intersectionality, exposes these intersections and thus offers a more complex understanding of male identity. These findings determine a new perspective of the meaning of Ottomanism as a lived experience, and consequently raise questions over normative terms of identity in the late Ottoman period in Lebanon. Rather than a wane in Ottomanism versus a rise in national identities, as the dominant historical narrative presents, identities from the perspective of masculinity present a map of heterogeneous yet simultaneously linked identities that were negotiated across a range of social dynamics.

This paper explores the representation of desire and sexuality in Lebanese war literature. By closely examining the emergent trend of “writing the body,” I argue that such representations redefine the process of canonization itself. I demonstrate how the contemporary Lebanese writers Rashīd al-Da῾īf, Hoda Barakāt, and Ulwiya Subh foreground a discourse that transcends the limitations of national, gender, and ethnic divisions and consequently opens a new dimension in the Arabic literary canon. These writers employ the novel as a tool to investigate the emerging sexual consciousness during the Lebanese civil war. Their portrayals of desire and sexual practices are derived from and reflective of the cultural and socio-political dynamics of their Lebanese society. Through a careful analysis of al-Da῾īf’s “To Hell with Meryl Streep” (2001), Barakat’s “Disciples of Passion” (1993), and Subh’s “Mariam of the Stories” (2002), I identify linguistic and lexical elements of the desiring narrative as it traces and traverses male and female bodies. I argue that such desiring narratives defy preconceptions of their foreignness and licentiousness. This paper suggests that by writing desire through writing the body across genders, these writers reimagine the canon as well as point toward its possible future.