Djeha, the North African Trickster

Djeha, the North African Trickster
Author: Christa C. Jones
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2023-08-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496847067

Djeha—also known as Juha, Jeh’a, and Ch’ha, among many variations—is an iconic figure, the trickster hero of an oral folktale tradition that has existed for centuries. The famous Maghrebian prankster is a poor, cunning, and resourceful character that delights in immoral behavior. Orientalists Auguste Mouliéras (1855-1931) and René Basset (1855-1924) were among the first Frenchmen to collect and translate popular Berber folktales. Today, trickster folktales from Algeria’s mountainous Kabylia region are not well known in the Anglophone world, even though they continue to be highly popular in France and in North Africa. Djeha, the North African Trickster is an annotated, critical translation of Auguste Mouliéras’s folktale collection Les Fourberies de Si Djeh’a, first published in French in 1892. The volume contains sixty tales and an in-depth introduction in which Christa C. Jones discusses jocular literature in Islam, the widespread oral folktale tradition linked to Djeha and his Turkish twin brother Nasreddin Hoca, and the impact of colonialism on the gathering and dissemination of the tales. The trickster is at the center of six themed chapters: “Family and Kinship”; “Animal Tales"; “Faces, Places, or Daily Life in the Village"; “Foodways”; “The Intricacies of Hospitality: Beware of Friends and Foes!"; and “Religion, Death, and the Afterlife.” Each chapter contains ten folktales preceded by a short introduction that contextualizes the pieces using historical, folkloristic, literary, and ethnographical sources. Ultimately, the book contributes to the preservation of an ancestral oral heritage, delivering this enduring character to new audiences.

Cultural Representations of the Second Wife

Cultural Representations of the Second Wife
Author: Jo Parnell
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 166693285X

Cultural Representation of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen, is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural work that provides insights into the realities of second wives the world over. This book allows the reader a three-dimensional view of the second wife experience. It asks: What does it mean, and what does it feel like, to be a second wife in a polygamous union or in a monogamous partnership? Is there a difference? Together, the writers in this book cleverly create an in-depth study of the subject through the productions referred to in the title, to offer a different approach to the popularly held views of the second wife. The book addresses the intricacies, customs, practices and lifestyles of the various Eastern and Western cultures and demonstrates the abilities of the Humanities to connect and interrelate with other disciplines as well as with the reader’s own world.

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics
Author: Mark McKinney
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2021-01-14
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9462702411

Profound analysis of French comics through a postcolonial lens Postcolonialism and migration are major themes in contemporary French comics and have roots in the Algerian War (1954–62), antiracist struggle, and mass migration to France. This volume studies comics from the end of the formal dismantling of French colonial empire in 1962 up to the present. French cartoonists of ethnic-minority and immigrant heritage are a major focus, including Zeina Abirached (Lebanon), Yvan Alagbé (Benin), Baru (Italy), Enki Bilal (former Yugoslavia), Farid Boudjellal (Algeria and Armenia), José Jover (Spain), Larbi Mechkour (Algeria), and Roland Monpierre (Guadeloupe). The author analyzes comics representing a gamut of perspectives on immigration and postcolonial ethnic minorities, ranging from staunch defense to violent rejection. Individual chapters are dedicated to specific artists, artistic collectives, comics, or themes, including avant-gardism, undocumented migrants in comics, and racism in far-right comics.

Strategies of Resistance in the Dramatic Texts of North African Women

Strategies of Resistance in the Dramatic Texts of North African Women
Author: Laura Chakravarty Box
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2005-02-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135932077

This study presents the first broad analysis of Maghrebian women's dramatic literature undertaken in English. The book considers sixty-five plays and works of performance art by they twenty-eight women dramatists from the Maghreb.

Staging Cultural Encounters

Staging Cultural Encounters
Author: Jane E. Goodman
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253049636

Staging Cultural Encounters tells stories about performances of cultural encounter and cultural exchange during the US tour of the Algerian theater troupe Istijmam Culturelle in 2016. Jane E. Goodman follows the Algerian theater troupe as they prepare for and then tour the U.S. under the auspices of the Center Stage program, sponsored by the US State Department to promote cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. The title of the play Istijmam produced was translated as "Apples," written by Abdelkader Alloula, a renowned Algerian playwright, director, and actor who was assassinated in 1994. Goodman take readers on tour with the actors as they move from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to the large state universities of New Hampshire and Indiana, and from a tiny community theater in small-town New England to the stage of the avant-garde La MaMa Theater in New York City. Staging Cultural Encounters takes up conundrums of cross-cultural encounter, challenges in translation, and audience reception, offering a frank account of the encounters with American audiences and the successes and disappointments of the experience of exchange.

African Theatre

African Theatre
Author: Martin Banham
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2002
Genre: African drama
ISBN: 9780253215390

The contributions to this volume in the African Theatre series make clear that the role of women in the theatre across the continent has changed as control is mainly held by literate elites and women's traditional standing has been lost to men.

Trickster Tales

Trickster Tales
Author:
Publisher: august house
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1996
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780874834505

Stories from cultures including ancient Babylonia, China, India, Eastern Europe, Morocco.

Entangled Performance Histories

Entangled Performance Histories
Author: Erika Fischer-Lichte
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000825922

Entangled Performance Histories is the first book-length study that applies the concept of "entangled histories" as a new paradigm in the field of theater and performance historiography. "Entangled histories" denotes the interconnectedness of multiple histories that cannot be addressed within national frameworks. The concept refers to interconnected pasts, in which historical processes of contact and exchange between performance cultures affected all involved. Presenting case studies from across the world—spanning Africa, the Arab-speaking world, Asia, the Americas and Europe—the book’s contributors systematically expand, exemplify and examine the concept of "entangled histories," thus introducing various innovative concepts, theories and methodologies for investigating reciprocally consequential processes of interweaving performance cultures from the past. Bringing together examples of entanglements in theater and performance histories from a broad variety of geographical and historical backgrounds, the book’s contributions build together a broad basis for a possible and necessary paradigmatic shift in the field of theater and performance historiography. Ideal for researchers and students of history, theater, performance, drama and dance, this volume opens novel perspectives on the possibilities and challenges of investigating the entangled histories of theater and performance cultures on a global scale.

Crosscurrents

Crosscurrents
Author: Janet Madden
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1992
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780030558528

Offering an introduction to Victorian culture and society, this glossary is also a route-map to further study. Designed specifically with undergraduates in mind, it contains around 400 short and accessible explanations of the key words, events, figures and concepts in the study of the Victorian period. From gothic and the Great Exhibition to origin of species and Oscar Wilde, this glossary gives an interdisciplinary overview of Victorian literature, culture and society, and offers directions for further reading. Covering literary topics, traditions and movements, as well as the period's history, culture and politics, the entries are fully cross-referenced and assume no prior knowledge, making this a useful reference on the Victorian period. The index makes it even more accessible, allowing the reader quickly to find information on topics not listed as individual entries.