Autobiography in the Muslim World (ISLA 581)

Fall 2013

Location: McTavish 3438, Room 4

Times: Fridays 12.35 to 2.25

Professor: Prashant Keshavmurthy

Institute of Islamic Studies

Office 311, Morrice Hall

Office hour: Thursday 12.00 – 1.00 or by appointment

McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore, all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/ for more information). L'université McGill attache une haute importance à l’honnêteté académique. Il incombe par conséquent à tous les étudiants de comprendre ce que l'on entend par tricherie, plagiat et autres infractions académiques, ainsi que les conséquences que peuvent avoir de telles actions, selon le Code de conduite de l'étudiant et des procédures disciplinaires (pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez consulter le site www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/).

In accord with McGill University’s Charter of Students’ Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded. Conformément à la Charte des droits de l’étudiant de l’Université McGill, chaque étudiant a le droit de soumettre en français ou en anglais tout travail écrit devant être noté (sauf dans le cas des cours dont l’un des objets est la maîtrise d’une langue).

Description: In this course we will read and open up for discussion what it has meant in different times and spaces in the Muslim world for the self to

1 write its own life. This will entail a focus on written self-representations ranging from medieval autobiographies, the early modern diary of a

Timurid prince to a contemporary memoir of growing up in Indian administered Kashmir. We will read these texts with an attention to such issues as whether the act of writing plays a constitutive or representative role in the telling of a life, whether the self in question is conceived of as unique or as transpersonal, questions of whether and how the self in question is gendered, of the articulations of individual and public memory and the related one of whether the writing self is unique or metonymic of a group.

This is not intended as an exhaustive list of orienting questions, only a suggestive one. At times we will supplement the listed autobiographies with scholarly and theoretical studies of autobiography and selfhood. Students are welcome to devise, in consultation with the instructor, their own topics for class discussions as well as for the final paper.

Method of Evaluation: 25% of the final grade will depend on your participation in class discussions, including attendance. A further 25% will be based on a 20 to 25 minute class presentation on one of the prescribed texts. You are welcome to make more than one presentation. The remaining

50% will be assigned on the basis of your final paper.

2 Texts to be purchased: If you do not already possess the following titles, you will need to buy them from the McGill University bookstore: 1.

Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition; ed.

Dwight F. Reynolds 2. , ; trans. Wheeler Thackston 3.

Zikr-e Mir: the autobiography of an eighteenth century Mughal poet; trans.

C.M. Naim 4. Taha Hussein, The Days 5. Mourid Barghouti, I Saw

Ramallah 6. Fawaz Turki, The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile

7. Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s Frontline

Account of Life, Love and War in his Homeland.

The remaining texts will be sent to you as PDF files.

Weekly readings

Weeks 1 and 2: Selections from Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the

Arabic Literary Tradition; ed. Dwight F. Reynolds (University of California

Press, 2001)

Weeks 3 and 4: Selections from Babur, Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur,

Prince and Emperor; trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Modern Library, 2002)

3 Weeks 5 and 6: Zikr-i Mir: the autobiography of the eighteenth century

Mughal poet Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir; trans. C.M. Naim (Oxford

University Press, USA, 2002)

Week 7: Taha Hussein, An Egyptian Childhood from The Days (American

University of Cairo Press, 2006)

Weeks 8 and 9: Jalal al-Ahmad, Lost in the Crowd; trans. John Green

(Three Continents Press, 1985)

Weeks 10 and 11: Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah: a Memoir of a

Palestinian Refugee; trans. Ahdaf Soueif (Anchor, 2003)

Weeks 12 and 13: Fawaz Turki, The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian

Exile (Monthly Review Press, 1972)

Week 14: Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s

Frontline Account of Life, Love and War in his Homeland (Scribner, 2010).

4 Two supplementary bibliographies:

1) More auotobiographies from the Muslim world:

Naser Khosrow, Safar Nameh Trans. W. M. Thackston (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 1986).

Gulbadan Begum, Humayunnama,” in Three Memoirs Of Humayun (Bibliotheca Iranica, Intellectual Traditions Series, 2009), 1-68. Trans. W. M. Thackston. Online but inferior edition: Humāyūn-Nama: The History of Humāyūn. Trans. Annette S. Beveridge (New Delhi: Goodword, 2001 [1902]); http://archive.org/details/historyofhumayun00gulbrich

Taj al-Saltanah, Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity, 1884-1914, Trans. Anna Vanzan and Amin Neshati; Ed. Abbas Amanat (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1993).

Bibi Khanum Astarabadi, “The Vices of Men,” in The Education of Women and The Vices of Men: Two Qajar Tracts. Trans. Hasan Javadi and Willem Floor (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2010).

Sadriddin Aini, The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini Trans. John R. Perry and Rachel Lehr (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, Bibliotheca Iranica, 1998).

Muhammad ʻAli Jamalzadah, Isfahan is Half the World: Memories of a Persian Boyhood (Princeton: Press, 1983).

Said Sayrafiezadeh, When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood (New York: Penguin, 2009).

Fadwa Tuqan, A Mountainous Journey: a Poet’s Autobiography (Greywolf

Press, 1990).

5 2) Scholarship on autobiographies from the Muslim world:

Stephen F. Dale, The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483 - 1530).

Rebecca Gould, ‘How Gulbadan Remembered: the Book of Humayun as an Act of Representation’, Early Modern Women: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011, vol. 6.

Marcia K. Hermansen, ‘Introduction to the Study of Dreams and Visions in Islam’, Religion, Vol. 27,1997, pp. 1–5.

A. Azfar Moin, ‘Peering Through the Cracks in the Baburnama: the Textured Lives of Mughal Sovereigns’, Indian Economic Social History Review 2012 49: 493

Arab Women’s Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing, Nawar Al- Hassan Golley, ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2007).

Al-Hassan Golley, Nawar. Reading Arab Women’s Autobiographies: Shahrazad Tells Her Story (Austin: Texas UP, 2003).

Many Ways of Speaking about the Self: Middle Eastern Ego-documents in Arabic, Persian and Turkish (14th-20th Century), Ralf Elger and Yavuz Köse, eds. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010).

Barbara Stocker-Parnian, “An Unusually Long Way to the Kaaba: Reflexions in the Safarna ma-ye Makka of Mehdi qoli Hedayat,” 103-116.

Women’s Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran, Afsaneh Najmabadi, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1990).

Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, Robin Ostle, Stefan Wild, eds. (London: Saqi Books, 1998).

6 Hülya Adak, “Suffragettes of the empire, daughters of the republic: women auto/biographers narrate national history (1918-1935)”, New Perspectives on

Turkey: Special Issue on Literature and the Nation, No.36, May 2007, 27-

51.

------, https://research.sabanciuniv.edu/289/1/3011800000903.pdf

------, “An epic for peace (Introduction to Halide Edib’s Memoirs)”,

Memoirs of Halidé Edib, Istanbul: Gorgias Press, 2004, pp. 5-28.

Margot Badran, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, Huda Shaarawi as translator, editor, and introducer, London: Virago, 1986.

------, “Expressing Feminism and Nationalism in Autobiography: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Educator”, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds., De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Afshan Bokhari, Masculine Modes of Female Subjectivity: Jahan Ara Begum’s (1614-1681) Patronage, Piety and Self-Fashioning in 17th C. Mughal India, London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming (February 2012).

Marilyn Booth, “‘A’isha ‘Ismat bint Isma’il Taymur” and “Zaynab Fawwaz al-‘Amili” in Roger Allen (ed.), Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1850- 1950, Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010, pp. 93-8, 366-76. Critical Feminist Biography, Special Double Issue of the Journal of Women’s History (edited with Antoinette Burton), 21: 3 and 4 (2009).

------,“Who Gets to Become the Liberal Subject? Ventriloquized Memoirs and the Individual in 1920s Egypt” in Christoph Schumann (ed.), Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean, Late 19th Century until the 1960s, Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 267-92.

7 ------,“From the Horse’s Rump and the Whorehouse Keyhole: Ventriloquized Memoirs as Political Voice in 1920s Egypt,” Maghreb Review 32:2-3 (2007): 233-61.

------,“Quietly Author(iz)ing Community: Biography as an Autobiography of Syrian Women in Egypt,” L’Homme: Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 14. Jg. Heft 2 (2003): 280-97.

------,“‘She Herself was the Ultimate Rule’: Arab Women’s Biographies of their Missionary Teachers”, Islam and Christian- Muslim Relations 13:4 (October 2002), pp. 427-48.Missionary Transformations,ed. Eleanor Doumato. May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.

------,“Infamous Women and Famous Wombs: Biography, Gender, and Islamist Concepts of Community in Contemporary Egypt” in Mary Ann Fay (ed.), Auto/Biography and the Creation of Identity and Community in the Middle East from the Early Modern to the Modern Period, New York: St. Martin’s, 2001, pp. 51-70.

------,“Reflections on Recent Autobiographical Writing in an Arab Feminist Vein,” Middle East Women’s Studies Review 15:4/16:1 (Winter/Spring 2001), pp. 8-11.

------,“The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne d’Arc” in Lila Abu Lughod (ed.),

Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 171-211; published in Arabic as “al-

Hayawat al-misriyya li-Jan dark”, trans. ‘Abd al-Hakim Hassan, in Lila Abu

Lughod (ed.), al-Haraka al-nisa’iyya wa-al-tatawwur fi al-Sharq al-awsat,

Cairo: al-Majlis al-a‘la lil-thaqafa, 1999, pp. 189-234.

8 ------,“Exemplary Lives, Feminist Aspirations: Zaynab Fawwaz and the Arabic Biographical Tradition,” Journal of Arabic Literature 26:1-2

(March-June 1995), pp. 120-46.

------,“Biography and Feminist Rhetoric in Early Twentieth-Century

Egypt: Mayy Ziyada's Studies of Three Women's Lives,” Journal of

Women's History 3:1 (Spring 1991): 38-61.

------,“Prison, Gender, Praxis: Women's Prison Memoirs in Egypt and

Elsewhere,” Middle East Report (MERIP) 149 (November‑December1987), pp. 35‑41.

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Atiya’s Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain (with Sunil Sharma), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.

------, A Princess’s Pilgrimage: Nawab Sikandar Begum’s A Pilgrimage to Mecca, Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007; London: Kube, 2007; Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.

------, “Introduction: A Princess Revealed” in Abida Sultaan, Memoirs of a Rebel Princess, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. xiii-xxxix.

Farzaneh Milani, “On Walls, Veils, and Silences: Writing Lives in Iran,” The Southern Review 38:3 (summer 2002).

------,“Yeki Bud, Yeki Nabud,” Autobiographical Themes in Turkish Literature: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, eds. Olcay Akyidiz,

9 Halim Kara, Borte Sagaster (Istanbul: Oriental-Institut, 2007), pp. 219-225.

------, “Veiled Voices: Women's Autobiographies in Iran”, in Women's Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran, ed. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 1990, pp. 1- 16; reprinted as “Foreign Autobiographies” in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau, Project Editors, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2010, pp. 355-361.

------, “Disclosing the Self”, in Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992 and 1994 (16th printing); and London: I.B. Taurus, 1992 and 1994. Gail Minault, “Foreword,” to A Woman of Substance: The Memoirs of Begum Khurshid , ed. by Lubna Kazim, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2005, pp. ix-xxv. Mildred Mortimer, “Assia Djebar's Algerian Quartet: A study in Fragmented Autobiography”, Research in African Literatures: Autobiography and African Literature 28.2 (Summer 1997), pp. 102-17.

Sylvia Vatuk, “Hamara Daur-i Hayat: An Indian Muslim Woman Writes her Life,” in Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and the Life History, ed.David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn, New Delhi: Permanent Black and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. 144-174.

Amina Yaqin, “Truth, fiction and autobiography in the novel tradition” (Special issue: ‘Novelization in the Islamic World’, ed. Mohamed-Saleh Omri), Comparative Critical Studies 4:3 (2007).

A bibliography of philosophical studies of selfhood and the soul would be longer than is pertinent for the purposes of this course. However, the following two books will serve as comprehensive and critical introductions to the range of philosophical interest in questions of selfhood and the soul. The first book, by Sorabji, covers these topics with reference to multiple civilizational contexts, including the Islamic, while the second, by Charles Taylor, confines itself to a Euro-American canon:

10 Richard Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death, The University of Chicago Press, 2006, 400pp., $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 0226768252. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity (Harvard University Press, 1992).

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