This paper emerges from my dissertation project that examines the crises and transformations of Ottoman authority in the 19th century by juxtaposing the emergence of Arabic and Turkish literary modernities. The political, social, and cultural pressures exerted by the Tanzimat reforms and the "Eastern Question"—the re-ordering of the empire that responded to the crises of Ottoman legitimacy and identity and to the series of potential cures (dismemberment, amputation, rehabilitation) introduced to treat the "Sick Man of Europe"—and the attendant emergence of an Ottoman polity per se, I argue, figure as corporeal inscriptions in certain literary and writerly practices. In this presentation, through a close reading of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s Al-Saq `ala ’l-saq in light of its somatic figures, I illustrate how the divisions of the author’s body in this text mirror the diffusion, dispersion, and dissipation of sultanic sovereignty, slowly being disembodied from the Sultan’s body, and how this pairing, in turn, testifies to the contradictions of the emergent possibilities of popular sovereignty. While the conjunction of the gradual disembodiment of Ottoman sovereignty from the Sultan’s body and new technologies of printing have allowed for the wider circulation and dissemination of written material in general and the thriving of new forms and modes of knowledge-production in particular, I argue that such developments also uprooted traditional modes of authority and legitimacy, inducing the deracination of writerly authority and subjecting the textual and political bodies to violent divisions and contortions. The figurations of the authorial body in this text, furthermore, prefigure the disfigurations of the Ottoman Empire announced by the Crimean War (1853-56) and its aftermath.

Rifa’a al-Tahtawi (1801-1873) was the students’ imam (religious adviser) in the first large-scale educational mission sent from Egypt to France in 1826. Upon returning to Egypt, he published an account that depicted his travel to Paris, which included information about French culture, the daily schedule of the students, and the subjects they studied. The account was entitled Takhlis al-Ibriz fi Talkhis Bariz [The Extraction of Gold in the Summation of Paris], published in Cairo in 1835. It was widely circulated and a second edition was published in 1848. While the first account has been the subject of numerous studies (El-Ariss, Tageldin, and Euben, among others), the second edition has been virtually overlooked. My paper fills this lacuna by examining the second edition and comparing it with the first edition. My analysis highlights the discrepancies between the two editions, arguing that Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849), Egypt’s Viceroy, utilized the second edition as propaganda to defend his educational policies, which were unpopular at the time. The edition included a long apologia, which defended Muhammad Ali’s educational policies and his missions to France, casting him as a defender of Muslims against the infidels. Although scholars assume al-Tahtawi had full agency over his words, I argue that his meteoric rise in state positions point to Muhammad Ali’s successful measures in rendering him a "docile body," to quote Foucault,. His voice was co-opted to bolster support for the Viceroy’s oppressive, modernizing measures and to silence his opponents (Fahmy). Nevertheless, al-Tahtawi fell from grace as soon as 'Abbas Pasha became the new Viceroy in 1849. Al-Tahtawi’s exile demonstrates the precariousness and the limitations of being an obedient, docile body to the state. My analysis reveals the intricate levels of colonial strata (cf. E. Powell) that affected the lives of common Egyptians and explains why al-Tahtawi was speaking in a bifurcated tongue: praising and denouncing the French simultaneously. His doublespeak mirrored the state's schizophrenic rhetoric, which highlighted the exigency of seeking Western education while denouncing its civilization as un-Islamic. My research is significant because the Viceroy’s policies continue to operate in the twenty-first century. When the Arab Uprising began in 2011, Hosni Mobarak, the fourth appointed president, accused his opponents of being unfaithful to Egypt and Islam. Morsi, the first elected president, hurled similar accusations against his opponents, and currently the army is following a similar strategy.

This paper brings the work of critical literacy theorists to bear on the traditional practice of Qur’anic Arabic literacy, defined as the reading and writing practices surrounding the Qur’an. I argue that Qur’anic Arabic literacy, in its pedagogy, is a form of praxis, wherein active use of the language is prioritized and critical thinking is embedded in a matrix of embodied behaviors, attitudes and beliefs. Drawing upon ethnographic work in Qur’an schools, I illustrate the primary emphasis on practicing literacy and the secondary activity surrounding this practice intended to support the literacy event. In its focus on memorization, Qur’anic Arabic literacy is not inherently contradictory to critical literacy, especially when coupled with the social learning that surrounds Qur’anic literacy events. Literacy in Arabic is often intimately tied to Qur’anic literacy where the practice of reading the Qur’an is the first exposure children have to the Arabic language. While Qur’anic Arabic literacy has often been devalued by orientalists as a practice of “rote memorization” and not “critical thinking,” my research illustrates that Qur’anic literacy can lend itself to forms of critical thinking that are in line with contemporary research on best practices in literacy. This research may open the barrier between secular and religious forms of literacy and allow for an open dialogue about the use of critical pedagogy in the context of Qur’anic literacy. It also contributes to questions about the future of Arabic literacy instruction in schools throughout the region, where there is a need to support Standard Arabic literacy through creative and critical pedagogy.

The fifteenth-century poet and statesman of Herat ‘Alishir Nava’i composed more than thirty works of prose and poetry, mostly in Chaghatay Turkic, but also in Persian. He purposefully wrote in an elevated style, rich in metaphor and allusion, and the problem that faced readers during both his own lifetime and after was how to make sense of the depth of his lexicon, which heavily incorporated Arabic and Persian loans. To that effect, readers compiled dictionaries and glossaries based on his work: prominent examples were produced for Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian audiences from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. But many more were produced in Central Asia during the nineteenth century, and the direction of translation, Turkic to Persian, Arabic to Turkic, or Turkic to Persian, underscores the multilingual and interactional nature (Sprachbund) of the region during this period. These works remind us that while he wrote mostly in Chaghatay Turkic, Nava’i was a writer who embraced Arabic and Persian influences in his own, unique vision. However, it was a vision not easily understood by many readers, at least not without the assistance of lexicographers. This paper analyzes key examples of this genre and illustrates how they helped readers read Nava'i. Some of these glossaries were little more than wordlists appended to copies of his work. Some not only listed words alphabetically by initial letter, but also by final letter, for rhyming purposes. In one major example, the Muntakhab al-lughat, compiled in Khiva at the turn of the nineteenth century, the author provided a lengthy introduction, explaining his reasons for compiling the work, and his reliance upon Nava’i for examples of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic words. And yet these were not simply linguistic tools: these were also keys to the manifold literary influences and cultural traditions of the Arabo-Persian-Turkic Sprachbund. The authors explained proper nouns, too: the names of Islamic prophets and saints, or Persian heroes and villains. They helped the reader navigate his way through the pyschogeography of the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central, and Inner Asia, as it appeared in the writing of 'Ali Shir Nava’i.

Writers of the modern Arab Renaissance, or al-nahda al-'arabiyya, engaged in a varied and highly contentious debate about the nature of language and identity. In the autumn of 1919, the pioneering Cairo-based newspaper Al-Hilal announced the circulation of a survey on the future of the Arabic language. Sixteen thinkers and men of letters responded to the survey, submitting articles that were published in al-Hilal through April 1920. In January 1928, Damascus Academy founding member ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi published a proposal in that institution’s flagship journal on the subject of words not found in the canonical Arabic dictionaries (al-kalimat ghayr al-qamusiyya), eliciting the responses of eighteen fellow members of the Academy (no women were invited to participate in either survey.) Both surveys relate to the future of the Arabic language and represent intellectuals’ attempts to protect, reform, augment, and police its content. Both followed major upheavals in their host countries and in the region: the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and the inauguration of the Mandate system at Versailles for the first, the French Mandatory power’s crushing of the Great Syrian Revolt 1925-1927 for the second. This paper finds that the surveyed thinkers expressed widely diverging views as to authority over the language and its development; the impact of the West (and its languages) upon the Arab world (and its language/s); the present generation’s links to and valuation of the multiple Arab and Islamic pasts; and the relations between the educated elite (al-khassa) and everyone else (al-‘amma.) As such, the Nahda-era debate dealt with language as a more complex object of attention than is generally recognized, while involving themes of historical import beyond language itself.

Scholarship on orientalist representations focus almost exclusively on the representations without regard to the people who consume them. As it is not the representation itself that imbues meaning, but the interaction between audience and text, this lack of attention to audiences is a major weakness in studies on orientalism. I draw on feminist audience response studies to argue through the inclusion of audience analysis scholars of orientalism will a) have a more thorough understanding of how cultural representations work, b) take individuals as agents who have the ability to engage with representations, and c) potentially open up space for moving through the dilemma of self/other and specifically the quagmire raised by orientalism. In this paper I will address the limitations of traditional scholarship on representations and explore the benefits of incorporating audience response studies through my case study of “Desert Romances” and their readers. Desert Romances are popular novels written in the West and feature a western woman in a romantic relationship with an Arab man in an “Arabian” setting. I have incorporated my collection of data from online forums/blogs, book reviews, and open-ended interviews with Desert Romance fans to substantiate my argument for the importance of audience response studies. Through my case study I found the readers, at times, create alternative readings and meanings from the texts that complicate a typical textually based analysis of orientalism.