Date:
Location:
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to present
Dr. Bootheina Majoul 
ISLT - University of Carthage, Tunisia
This event has been canceled.
Dr Bootheina Majoul is currently Associate Professor of English Literature at the High Institute of Languages of Tunis (ISLT), University of Carthage. She holds an MA in Cross Cultural Poetics (ISLT, University of Carthage) and a PhD in English Literature (FLAHM, University of Manouba). She is currently the coordinator of an MA of English for Communication at ISLT and a member elect of ISLT Scientific Council. She taught at eight different Tunisian institutions and has more than 22 years of teaching experience. Her areas of specialization are Literature, Film Studies, Cultural Poetics, Digital Pedagogy and Communication.
Majoul has published 2 books Doris Lessing: Poetics of Being and Time (2016), The Genetic and Generic Affiliations of Rushdie’s Satire in Midnight’s Children (2017) and edited 3 volumes: On Trauma and Traumatic Memory (2017) and Terrorism in Literature: Examining a Global Phenomenon (2019), and Maghrebean Voices: Roots/Routes (to be issued in 2023). She also co-edited 4 volumes: On History & Memory in Arab Literature & Western Poetics (2020), Poetics of the Native (2020), Poetics and Hermeneutics of Pain and Pleasure (2021) and Precarious Lives, Uncertain Futures (to be issued in 2023). Prof Majoul is also the author of several academic articles and five collections of poems. She has delivered presentations in several national and international conferences in Tunisia and other foreign countries. She has also organized several academic events: conferences, workshops, study days and webinars.
Dr Majoul is an Editor (Comparative Literature) with Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK), a member of the Doris Lessing Society (Ontario, Canada), and a member of the scientific committee of the research laboratory “Language and Cultural Forms” (ISLT, University of Carthage). She is Afikra Ambassador in Tunisia. Contact: bootheinamajoul@gmail.com or bootheina.majoul@islt.ucar.tn.
This talk is part of the Maghrebean Encounters Network lecture series. The region that is today known as the Maghreb (literally meaning the sunset and/or the occident) covers the northern part of the African continent. It is considered as the occidental part of the Arab world and englobes five countries formally united in 1989 in what is called in French l’Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA). These countries are: Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania. This geographical union is comprised between the mediterranean sea, the Libyan Sahara and the Atlantic Ocean. Scholars have for long approached the study of this region as part of Middle-Eastern Studies, and with more political and economic relevance, the acronym MENA was developed to encompass the Middle-East and North Africa as one region united culturally, linguistically and religiously by the Arab Culture and Language and Islam.
The study of the Maghreb, its history, literature, society and politics is relevant for several reasons that can be traced over 3000 years back in time. The region had been the cradle of innumerable civilizations and cultures, a witness to colonial and postcolonial challenges, a hub of entrepreneurship and economic resistance, the birthplace of the Arab Spring and a major regional political player despite the existing shortcomings. The issues that are still incumbent in this region, the stumbling struggle for human rights, the loaded historical trauma and the impact of French and Italian colonial cultures, the ongoing immigration crisis, the potential of youth and artists’ creativity, women’s empowerment struggle and a long history of pride and resistance make the Maghreb an attractive and influential subject of study that interconnects with research by scholars interested in Africa, the Middle-East, the Arabic language, literature and translation, Religion, Law and Human Rights, Politics, Economy, and human mobility…etc
Maghrebean Encounters is a network that aspires to connect Maghrebean researchers with Harvard community to study and discuss issues of historical or presentist relevance to both research communities, which may result in academic interactions and encounters that open up more prospects of research that are aligned along a sound understanding of the region and its radiance. Some research avenues may touch on the construction of the Maghreb per se, as a distinctive unit with a specific perception of identity/ies inherent in it, pressing issues that require adressing such as the ongoing political crises, Maghreb-Sahel relations and the power dynamics in the region, entrepreneurial potential and gender dynamics, literary tropes, metaphors and pragmatics devised by Maghrebean writers, pragmatics of religious and political discourse and the various perspectives inherent in the Maghreb as a region as opposed to individual countries forming it and in parallel to the broader MENA context with which it operates.
Contact: Liz Flanagan