Fighting Forgetfulness: Palestinian Folktales and Memory Development

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Fighting Forgetfulness: Palestinian Folktales and Memory Development
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Elphinstone Institute Public Lecture Series

Palestinian folktales are tools for cultural resistance and Palestinian female storytellers have played a crucial role in safeguarding Palestinian cultural and national memory. This talk explores the idea of how Palestinian popular culture, through oral literature, is a foundational means for negotiating power and resistance, social interaction, and identity. Through careful investigation of Palestinian folktales and the role of female storytellers, the talk unpacks the ways in which folktales frame Palestinian cultural identity, by looking at how peasantry, food, and religion narratives in folktales activate memory across generations.

Farah Aboubakr is a Lecturer in Arabic at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She joined the university in 2013 and since then has been involved in teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of Arabic language, culture and literature, Middle Eastern, and Translation Studies. She has been actively engaged in research within the fields of Palestine Studies, Arabic Literature and Popular Culture, Post-colonial, Memory, and Cultural Studies.

Speaker
Farah Aboubakr
Hosted by
Elphinstone Institute
Venue
MacRobert Building, MR051
Contact

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