MLA Commons | Elizabeth M. Holt | Activity https://mla.hcommons.org/members/elizabethholt/activity/ Activity feed for Elizabeth M. Holt. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 07:37:02 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 85e5c89f864e9ebc223db67fb814553a Elizabeth M. Holt's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1935978/ Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:24:57 -0500 0 d83887777560a4b6d698cca91301ec4b Elizabeth M. Holt's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1858810/ Mon, 18 Sep 2023 03:23:47 -0400 0 8f98e6019cd561bf584d2844c338b527 Elizabeth M. Holt changed their profile picture https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1858811/ Sun, 17 Sep 2023 23:25:53 -0400 0 70b23dae9d50dde91ed62827fffd6bdb Elizabeth M. Holt's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1747885/ Thu, 29 Jul 2021 20:55:15 -0400 0 a76b083f1bc2fbbbe29a15a8b56de4b0 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Resistance Literature and Occupied Palestine in Cold War Beirut in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1727898/ Thu, 18 Feb 2021 02:23:53 -0500 FREE ACCESS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2020.1855933
For the last decade of his life, the Palestinian intellectual, author, and editor Ghassan Kanafani (d. 1972) was deeply immersed in theorizing, lecturing, and publishing on Palestinian resistance literature from Beirut. A refugee of the 1948 war, Kanafani presented…[Read more]

]]> 0 bfe0662a9c1b238bd40153c17bdf1710 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Resistance Literature and Occupied Palestine in Cold War Beirut https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1727873/ Wed, 17 Feb 2021 18:26:30 -0500 FREE ACCESS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2020.1855933
For the last decade of his life, the Palestinian intellectual, author, and editor Ghassan Kanafani (d. 1972) was deeply immersed in theorizing, lecturing, and publishing on Palestinian resistance literature from Beirut. A refugee of the 1948 war, Kanafani presented…[Read more]

]]> 0 0587461179aea37fb0221212a6126934 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ's Season of Migration to the North, the CIA, and the Cultural Cold War after Bandung in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1680241/ Sat, 07 Mar 2020 16:26:05 -0500 In the fall of 1966, Ḥiwār magazine published al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ’s novel Mawsim al-hijrah ilā al-shamāl [ Season of Migration to the North ]. Arabic literary critics both hailed the novel in the Arabic press and mourned that it had been published by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom’s Ḥiwār, part of a global covert cultural front of the C…[Read more]

]]> 0 d971cb9a36708ba070dba363471b3625 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ's Season of Migration to the North, the CIA, and the Cultural Cold War after Bandung https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1680198/ Fri, 06 Mar 2020 22:55:44 -0500 In the fall of 1966, Ḥiwār magazine published al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ’s novel Mawsim al-hijrah ilā al-shamāl [ Season of Migration to the North ]. Arabic literary critics both hailed the novel in the Arabic press and mourned that it had been published by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom’s Ḥiwār, part of a global covert cultural front of the C…[Read more]

]]> 0 ac236b73f67545a6a231d1cf7109149c Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "In a Language That Was Not His Own": On Ahlām Mustaghānamī's Dhākirat al-jasad and Its French Translation Mémoires de la chair in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1668649/ Sat, 26 Oct 2019 16:35:13 -0400 Abstract
This paper argues that Ah!lam Mustaghanami’s novel Dhakirat al-jasad (Memories of the Flesh)
enacts a break with Algeria’s Francophone literary past, multiply staging its affiliation with the
Arabic language. !e novel positions itself as part of an Algerian linguistic drama that, once
translated into French as Mémoires de la chai…[Read more]

]]> 0 a8a85a6a0114945cf7cbcbdd9eedaed8 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited “Bread or Freedom”: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and the Arabic Literary Journal Ḥiwār (1962-67) (complete) in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1668647/ Sat, 26 Oct 2019 16:34:17 -0400 In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Free- dom, with its main offices in Paris, lhe CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and funded a worldwide network of literary journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits and other…[Read more]

]]> 0 dd55e12d7bf41dc1f18baa69bd760b90 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "In a Language That Was Not His Own": On Ahlām Mustaghānamī's Dhākirat al-jasad and Its French Translation Mémoires de la chair https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1668594/ Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:50:56 -0400 Abstract
This paper argues that Ah!lam Mustaghanami’s novel Dhakirat al-jasad (Memories of the Flesh)
enacts a break with Algeria’s Francophone literary past, multiply staging its affiliation with the
Arabic language. !e novel positions itself as part of an Algerian linguistic drama that, once
translated into French as Mémoires de la chai…[Read more]

]]> 0 801f99985cec023725a3c423292a5c23 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited “Bread or Freedom”: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and the Arabic Literary Journal Ḥiwār (1962-67) (complete) https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1668593/ Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:45:29 -0400 In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Free- dom, with its main offices in Paris, lhe CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and funded a worldwide network of literary journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits and other…[Read more]

]]> 0 7983df42c1daa16a5b57080cbf4a36c3 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited From Gardens of Knowledge to Ezbekiyya after Midnight: The Novel and the Arabic Press from Beirut to Cairo, 1870-1892 in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1666035/ Wed, 09 Oct 2019 16:25:26 -0400 Late 19th-century Beirut and Cairo were capitals of Arabic literary production and press
activity. A period, oft deemed a nahḍah, that witnessed the advent of the novel form or
riwāyah in Arabic, this was also the moment of intensified French and British imperial
involvement in the region, and the concomitant industrialization of Beirut’s silk…[Read more]

]]> 0 7fad15613d8cb9bf780c242af54a9d08 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited From Gardens of Knowledge to Ezbekiyya after Midnight: The Novel and the Arabic Press from Beirut to Cairo, 1870-1892 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1665785/ Tue, 08 Oct 2019 16:25:46 -0400 Late 19th-century Beirut and Cairo were capitals of Arabic literary production and press
activity. A period, oft deemed a nahḍah, that witnessed the advent of the novel form or
riwāyah in Arabic, this was also the moment of intensified French and British imperial
involvement in the region, and the concomitant industrialization of Beirut’s silk…[Read more]

]]> 0 2cf4250d3012d73503db071f3332cf59 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Cartography and Clandestinité in Leïla Sebbar’s Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664065/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:32:51 -0400 Abstract.
In this paper, I read Leı ¨la Sebbar’s staging in her novel She´razzed: 17 ans,brune, frise´ e, les yeux verts of the resistance by children of North African and other immigrants in the early 1980s to the French state’s cartographic modes and documentsof control. The paper will consider the many uses to which the map was put by theFren…[Read more]

]]> 0 efce931297459a4d68c7e0f6ea308eeb Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "In a Language That Was Not His Own": On Ahlām Mustaghānamī's Dhākirat al-jasad and Its French Translation Mémoires de la chair in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664064/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:31:57 -0400 Abstract
This paper argues that Ahlām Mustaghānamī’s novel Dhākirat al-jasad (Memories of the Flesh) enacts a break with Algeria’s Francophone literary past, multiply staging its affiliation with the Arabic language. e novel positions itself as part of an Algerian linguistic drama that, once translated into French as Mémoires de la chair , is p…[Read more]

]]> 0 7ab3bd68a65ae8b9e477707e60923af7 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "Narrating the Nahda: The Syrian Protestant College, al-Muqtataf, and the Rise of Jurji Zaydan," AUB: 150 Years in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664063/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:31:06 -0400 Published in Cairo in 1892, the first issue of Jurji Zaydan’s Arabic journal al-Hilal contained a history of the Arabic press, including a list of the journals published in Beirut in the 1870s and 1880s, when Zaydan was a young waiter and finally a Syrian Protestant College medical student and leader of the 1882 protest. Listed too are the Arabi…[Read more]

]]> 0 3d0cd27474d88cb98bf3a0627bd313e2 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "The Story of Zahra and Its Critics: Feminism and Agency at War," Arabic Literature for the Classroom in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664062/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:30:13 -0400 ABSTRACT Theorizations of the female subject in Arabic literary criticism have long charted debates within Western feminism. This chapter invites a reading of Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel The Story of Zahra that would attend rather to the quiet narrative aporia surrounding a reticent Zahra, the challenge her will to be “look[ed] at [as] a woman in…[Read more]

]]> 0 aa4e98aa846494051ca99fad924142eb Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "'A Fabrication in Fabrication': Ya'qub Sarruf's *Fatat Misr* and the Fiction of Finance in Colonial Egypt" in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664061/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:29:20 -0400 ABSTRACT Serialized over the course of 1905 in the Arabic journal al-Muqtaṭaf, Ya‘qūb Ṣarrūf’s novel Fatāt Mişr [The Girl of Egypt] was avidly read by contemporary subscribers and then soon forgotten by Arabic’s reading public. Ṣarrūf came to despise Fatāt Mişr and all of his novels, finding that the market for the genre in Arabic fell far sh…[Read more]

]]> 0 4cec331097bba40667ab00cfbfef34b6 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Narrative and the Reading Public in 1870s Beirut in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664060/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:28:28 -0400 ABSTRACT This paper reads narrative published in the journals of 1870s Beirut in the context of an emerging bourgeois readership and argues that the significance of this archive to modern Arabic fiction has been neglected by critics. Taking the intensification of the silk trade with France following the civil war of 1860 as a point of historical…[Read more]

]]> 0 064e25abe5b888272c90efbe410c9469 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "Cairo and the Cultural Cold War for Afro-Asia," Routledge Handbook to the Global Sixties in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664059/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:27:34 -0400 ABSTRACT Cultural cold war played out in Arabic from the late 1950s into the early 1970s in the
conference halls, hotel lobbies, cafes, bars, magazine offices, publishing houses, kiosks,
and streets of Beirut and Cairo. Berlin, Paris, Tashkent, Khartoum, London, Baghdad1,
and Tunis all have their place in this built landscape of cultural cold…[Read more]

]]> 0 057a140cb9d47dd9cdb455f54d107958 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited “Bread or Freedom”: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and the Arabic Literary Journal Ḥiwār (1962-67) in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664053/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:26:18 -0400 Abstract
In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
with its main offices in Paris. The CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in
response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and fiinded a worldwide network of literary
journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits…[Read more]

]]> 0 5b626766f8d8dca2cee3cfb9e267a0e2 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Cold War in the Arabic Press: Ḥiwār (Beirut, 1962–67) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the group 2019 MLA Convention https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1664052/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:25:21 -0400 ABSTRACT

Extensively quoting from the archives of the International Association for Cultural Freedom, a Cold War organization founded as a CIA front in 1950, this chapter provides a history for their Arabic literary activities, including the journals Aṣwāt, Adab, and their best known work in the region: Ḥiwār (1962–67), edited by Palesti…[Read more]

]]> 0 7561f93cac8c628c3f23c6115444a933 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Cartography and Clandestinité in Leïla Sebbar’s Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663978/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:50:51 -0400 Abstract.
In this paper, I read Leı ¨la Sebbar’s staging in her novel She´razzed: 17 ans,brune, frise´ e, les yeux verts of the resistance by children of North African and other immigrants in the early 1980s to the French state’s cartographic modes and documentsof control. The paper will consider the many uses to which the map was put by theFren…[Read more]

]]> 0 211c1b144bd101674e885805f19c303e Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "In a Language That Was Not His Own": On Ahlām Mustaghānamī's Dhākirat al-jasad and Its French Translation Mémoires de la chair https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663977/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:42:28 -0400 Abstract
This paper argues that Ahlām Mustaghānamī’s novel Dhākirat al-jasad (Memories of the Flesh) enacts a break with Algeria’s Francophone literary past, multiply staging its affiliation with the Arabic language. e novel positions itself as part of an Algerian linguistic drama that, once translated into French as Mémoires de la chair , is p…[Read more]

]]> 0 1177bdde02e27e2e3cda35ed27244a99 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "Narrating the Nahda: The Syrian Protestant College, al-Muqtataf, and the Rise of Jurji Zaydan," AUB: 150 Years https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663976/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:34:49 -0400 Published in Cairo in 1892, the first issue of Jurji Zaydan’s Arabic journal al-Hilal contained a history of the Arabic press, including a list of the journals published in Beirut in the 1870s and 1880s, when Zaydan was a young waiter and finally a Syrian Protestant College medical student and leader of the 1882 protest. Listed too are the Arabi…[Read more]

]]> 0 721a488150f4f06013e8469557904b60 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "The Story of Zahra and Its Critics: Feminism and Agency at War," Arabic Literature for the Classroom https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663947/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:24:48 -0400 ABSTRACT Theorizations of the female subject in Arabic literary criticism have long charted debates within Western feminism. This chapter invites a reading of Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel The Story of Zahra that would attend rather to the quiet narrative aporia surrounding a reticent Zahra, the challenge her will to be “look[ed] at [as] a woman in…[Read more]

]]> 0 6c6ee5c40bf19151d5c43dcc4d08b7b4 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "'A Fabrication in Fabrication': Ya'qub Sarruf's *Fatat Misr* and the Fiction of Finance in Colonial Egypt" https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663946/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:16:02 -0400 ABSTRACT Serialized over the course of 1905 in the Arabic journal al-Muqtaṭaf, Ya‘qūb Ṣarrūf’s novel Fatāt Mişr [The Girl of Egypt] was avidly read by contemporary subscribers and then soon forgotten by Arabic’s reading public. Ṣarrūf came to despise Fatāt Mişr and all of his novels, finding that the market for the genre in Arabic fell far sh…[Read more]

]]> 0 77f5fd935e88e34144bfa52151996929 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Narrative and the Reading Public in 1870s Beirut https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663943/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:59:58 -0400 ABSTRACT This paper reads narrative published in the journals of 1870s Beirut in the context of an emerging bourgeois readership and argues that the significance of this archive to modern Arabic fiction has been neglected by critics. Taking the intensification of the silk trade with France following the civil war of 1860 as a point of historical…[Read more]

]]> 0 43e676c34d87d16ad4d208b39474835e Elizabeth M. Holt deposited "Cairo and the Cultural Cold War for Afro-Asia," Routledge Handbook to the Global Sixties https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663942/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:51:15 -0400 ABSTRACT Cultural cold war played out in Arabic from the late 1950s into the early 1970s in the
conference halls, hotel lobbies, cafes, bars, magazine offices, publishing houses, kiosks,
and streets of Beirut and Cairo. Berlin, Paris, Tashkent, Khartoum, London, Baghdad1,
and Tunis all have their place in this built landscape of cultural cold…[Read more]

]]> 0 2ba9a5e67932828c4b7a414640389a29 Elizabeth M. Holt deposited Cold War in the Arabic Press: Ḥiwār (Beirut, 1962–67) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663933/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:28:54 -0400 ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a history for Ḥiwār (1962–67), edited by Palestinian poet Tawfīq Ṣāyigh from Beirut with broad dissemination in the Arab world, and outlines the CCF’s other interventions in the Arab cultural sphere from 1955. Over the course of its nearly five-year run, Ḥiwār published both emerging and established authors, serv…[Read more]

]]> 0 13862aa16bcf5075463a0be11a1c1c1e Elizabeth M. Holt deposited “Bread or Freedom”: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and the Arabic Literary Journal Ḥiwār (1962-67) https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663931/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:24:08 -0400 Abstract
In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
with its main offices in Paris. The CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in
response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and fiinded a worldwide network of literary
journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits…[Read more]

]]> 0 1d90966c2739778661b7a5dbc65a3934 Elizabeth M. Holt's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1663928/ Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:17:27 -0400 0 74a59d1efb9231112c00b2316eb24b34 Elizabeth M. Holt's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1606350/ Sun, 15 Apr 2018 17:03:54 -0400 0