كتاب غزة تكتب: سرد فلسطين

In Palestine, stories are sacred. In trying times, we turn to story-telling for solace. Mothers and grandmothers are the major source of stories in the families. And just when you are old enough, you realise that you have been shaped by these stories and that they go far beyond entertainment. As a Palestinian, I have been brought up on stories, and I learned early in my life that it's both selfish and treacherous to keep a story to myself. If I allowed a story to stop, I would be betraying my legacy, my mother, my grandmother, and my homeland. This essay describes the creation of a collection of stories by young Palestinian authors that whet the much-needed talent for life.كتاب "غزة تكتب": سرد فلسطي

Unframing John Donne’s transgressive poetry in light of Bakhtin’s dialogic theories

John Donne’s famous poem “The Bait” parodies, and intertexts with, Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd”. This couplet establishes Donne’s poetic experimentations: he’s calling for “some” not “all”, adding that his adventures are “new”. This thesis aims to explore John Donne’s poetic productions, which for centuries remained in the margins of the English canon, in their attempts to undermine and subvert existing modes of versification and the socio-political norms they represent. For that, Donne was subjected to negative framing and marginalisation from his contemporaries. Therefore, my thesis began unravelling early and modern reception of Donne in the light of New Historicism’s assumptions as a philosophical framework. In addition, this thesis examines Donne’s poetic explorations in the light of Russian formalist critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of parody, carnival, and polyphony, which present particularly rich potential analytical tools for the study of emerging, anti-establishment literary texts. I argue that Donne’s positioning himself in direct opposition to the early Neo-classicists shaped the way he thought of and approached poetry in both form and content. John Donne’s parodic poetry helped him engage in a dialogue with his age and beyond and create poems with multiple-voices that gave his poetry the timeless appeal. Further, close readings of selected Donne poems reveal that he was offering alternative modes of versification and a different worldview from the one prevalent at his time and thus subverting monologic dominant poetic styles and systematised poetry by bringing to the poem carnivalistic discourse, ideas, and people often denied access under the pretext of etiquette and rules of decorum. In addition, Donne presents a role model for emerging writers resisting censorship and a prime example of Bakhtin’s concepts of addressivity and answerability: his poetry is usually addressed to posterity, whom Donne calls “future rebels”, and anticipates and generates future responses hence keeping it both universal and timeless. Therefore, my thesis concludes that Donne’s poetry invites a dialogic reading on three major levels: 1) Donne demonstrates Bakhtin’s perception of literature as a dynamic which refutes the existing canon as a fixed reality; 2) Donne’s poetry engenders dialogue between two opposing worldviews regarding poetry writing: the mainstream and the experimental, disturbing the established aesthetics of poetry of his time; and 3) the multiplicity of voices in Donne’ poetry illustrate Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and polyphony. In brief, John Donne might be the first serious attempt to indulge in bringing poetry from the towers of the courts as an elite practice to the public

قراءة قصيدة "الطعم" لجون دن في ضوء المحاكاة في نظرية ميخائيل باختين

While conventional critics seek the comic aspect of parody, modernist critics credit parody with questioning mainstream literary trends and subverting literary production. For instance, Mikhail Bakhtin believes in parody’s power to create “a decrowning double” by turning the official worldview up-side-down. For experimental poets like John Donne, parody transcends mere comical imitation into a serious practice. Donne, having lived in the heyday of the Renaissance with its overemphasis on decorum and courtly love, sought refuge in parody to resist and disturb existing norms of versification and offer an alternative worldview. This paper examines John Donne’s parody poem “The Bait” in the light of Bakhtin’s concept of parody as a decrowning double. The analysis shows that not only had Donne resorted to parody to criticize the society, but he also employed it to undermine established rules of poetry. The study concludes that Donne used parody to create an important platform to liberate poetry from dominant modes of versification, invite readers, often by means of defamiliarisation, to reconsider their stance and literary taste, and promote experimental styles; thus, Donne transcends the norms of prevalent courtly love poetry once and for all.قراءة في قصيدة "الطعم" لجون دن في ضوء المحاكاة لميخائيل باختي

Capacity-building training to develop short story writing skills, social values, and gender fairness at the IUG, Palestine: A case study

This study reflects on an intensive fiction-writing training course conducted at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in Palestine. The trainees were divided into two language-specific groups. The immediate outcome of this training course was 87 short stories. The study assessed the participants' satisfaction levels regarding the quality and content of training, besides it conducted thematic analyses of the short stories produced by the trainees. The Feedback collected indicate that the participants voluntarily shared and fictionalized intimate moments from their lives, as well as experiences learned during the training. (IUG) تسلط هذه الدراسة الضوء على برنامج تدريبي مكثف في كتابة القصة القصيرة، و الذي تم تنفيذه في الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة في فلسطين. تم تقسيم المتدربين إلى مجموعتين تتميزان باللغة (عربي-أنجليزي). وكانت المخرجات الملموسة المباشرة لهذا البرنامج التدريبي عبارة عن 87 قصة قصيرة. قامت الدراسة بتقييم مستويات رضا المتدربين بشأن جودة ومحتوى التدريب، بالإضافة إلى إجراء تحليلات ثيماتية للقصص القصيرة التي أنتجها المتدربون. وتشير التغذية الراجعة التي تم الحصول عليها بعد انتهاء التدريب إلى أن المشاركين شاركوا بشكل طوعي وخيالي لحظات حميمة من حياتهم، فضلاً عن التجارب التي تعلموها خلال التدريب.

The Influence of Bilingualism on the Production of Stop Consonants in L1 (Arabic) and L2 (English): Acoustic Analysis of Stop’s Closure Duration

This paper investigates the impact of bilingualism on the difficulties of pronunciation for both L1 (Arabic) and L2 (English). It assesses the production of stop sounds in Arabic and English through an acoustic analysis of stops' closure duration (henceforth CD), as pronounced by Arabic-English bilinguals whose L1 is Palestinian Arabic. Additionally, the paper aims to highlight the difficulties of pronunciation in both languages. Three groups of same aged adult subjects participated in the production tests; 1) Arabic-English bilinguals whose L1 is Palestinian Arabic, 2) Arabic-monolinguals, and 3) English-monolinguals. The stops in word-medial and final positions were included in closed syllables (CVC) in meaningful words inserted in carrier sentences. The results revealed that the CD of the interaction of stops was represented in four categories; 1) unidirectional effect of L1 on L2 that caused a foreign accent, 2) bidirectional influence resulting in L1-L2 interference, 3) unidirectional impact of L2 on L1, and 4) nativelikeness in both languages without language interference. In addition, the findings showed that bilinguals faced pronunciation challenges in both similar and dissimilar sounds. This paper is expected to initiate more comprehensive studies in the field of interaction between Arabic and English in the Arabic context