The question of identity in the Emirati women’s novel

Monday 24 January 2022
5:00pm- 7:00pm

This event is held in Arabic

Join the online conference titled The Questions of Identity in the Emirati Women’s Novel by Dr Muna Al Sahili. This conference is organised by Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi in cooperation with the French Research Centre of the Arabian Peninsula (CEFREPA) 

Conference abstract:

Discussions on the term “identity” have been ongoing since the evolution of human societies. Many have been searching for the forms of loyalties and affiliations that bind people with others.
Perhaps the recent interest in this term came as a result of globalization as it generated more concerns and questions on the origins and affiliations in a constantly changing world.
The Emirati women’s novel is mainly tackling issues related to the question of identity, and focused on human relationships with the other understood as an alter ego, versus the other seen as a stranger, whether at a linguistic, social, cultural, spatial, or other levels.
Therefore, this study aims to explore the Emirati women’s novel in depth by capturing the features- within the narrative text- that expresses the position of the self and the harmonious relationships or divergent relationships.

About the speaker:

Muna Al Sahili is a Libyan writer and a researcher based in the UAE. She is an assistant professor in comparative literature and literary criticism at the University of Benghazi in Libya, and currently works as an assistant professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the United Arab Emirates University. She received her PhD from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) in 2007. Her research topics tackled “Poetic Creativity: Testimonies of Contemporary Libyan and British Poets – An Introduction to a Comparative Study.”
She published several research and literary works, including “The Image of the Stranger in the Emirati Women’s Novel” (2020), and “The Language and the Question of Identity” (2018) and two poetry collections “On the Letter” (2018) and “Shades of the Soul” (2021).

On the day and time of the event, please click on the link to join