Writing Tangier

Writing Tangier discusses an array of topics relating to the literature on Tangier from the seventeenth century to the present. Major questions include: Why has Tangier come to play an important role in contemporary world literary history as a signifier in the literary imagination; what is the nature of the inter-textual output produced through Paul Bowles’ translations of the oral tales of a circle of uneducated storytellers (including Mohammed Mrabet and Larbi Layachi) and the text (For Bread Alone) brought to Bowles by the literate Mohamed Choukri; how do academics, artists, and writers who have been based in the city or who have written about it assess the various socio-economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped its cultural production and the relationship of this production to the celebrated hybrid aspects of its identity; does the success of the literature of Tangier reflect a truly new multicultural cosmopolitanism, or does it stem from the fact that this literature is congenial to Westerners, that it is understood in terms that they themselves define, and that much of it (including productions in Arabic prepared with the expectation of translation) has even been «written to measure» for them?

The Editors: Ralph M. Coury is Professor of History at Fairfield University in Connecticut where he specializes in teaching Middle Eastern history. He received his B.A. in history from Hamilton College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University. He has written a wide range of works on Arab political and intellectual history and Orientalism, including The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: The Early Years of Azzam Pasha, 1893-1938. He is the co-editor of The Arab-African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies and Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies.
R. Kevin Lacey is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He earned his B.A. in government at Cornell University, and his M.A. in Middle Eastern studies and his Ph.D. in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard University. His fields of specialization include Arabic literature, Arab-Islamic civilization, and cross-cultural encounters involving the West and the Arab-Islamic world. He has co-edited and contributed articles to Mirrors on the Maghrib and The Arab-African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies. He is co-editor of Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies.