Research Title: Shakespeare and the Critic: To read, or not to read Authorial Intent in Shakespeare

Author: Nadia Mohammad Hamdi, Published Year: 2015

Philadelphia University International Conference, جامعة فيلادلفيا - الأردن

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: validate literature through an investigation of literary intention has long been considered a direct offense against the text. Having dissolved the age- old union between the writer and the text, the Death of the Author brought on the anti-intentionalist viewpoint which rejected the author's intention regarding it as a constraint which limits the ways in which a text might be understood. The logical corollary of this conception of a living, organic text, which lives in spite of and outside its author’s intention, is a dynamic multivocal symphony that invites multiple readings, unique interpretations and ambiguity tolerance. However, when faced by an author whose life and intentions are so prominent as those of Shakespeare, how can a reader uphold an interpretation which abolishes the author- function? When faced by Shakespeare’s texts, Deconstruction and other forms of post-structuralism did little more than shift the focus from the author as the ultimate defining entity, to the critic as the supreme cultural authority. This research paper, aims to introduce some of the most prominent debates into Shakespearian discourse with a focus on reader engagement and areas of reader- response which have defied conventional approaches to the author- god and have decentered the author and or critic from the debate. It adopts an iconoclastic approach to some of the most widely observed interpretations put to Shakespearian texts and concludes with a brief summary of points of similarity and departure between readings based on authorial- intent and anti-intentionalist readings.

Research Title: Words have power: A Rhetorical Analysis of the English Speeches of Queen Rania of Jordan

Author: Hanan Ali Amaireh, Published Year: 2016

Lambert Academic Publishing,

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: This study compares the language of males and females in the political arena when addressing the same issue, and interestingly when they are a couple, and both are young. King Abdullah’s and Queen Rania’s speeches are chosen as case studies. This raises the following questions.

Research Title: A Comparative Political Discourse Analysis of Youth Representation in the Corpus of King Abdullah’s and Queen Rania’s English Speeches

Author: Hanan Ali Amaireh, Published Year: 2017

Philadelphia University International Conference on Youth, جامعة فيلادلفيا - الأردن

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: This paper is a qualitative and quantitative study of youth representation in the political discourse. I have chosen to analyse two corpora of King Abdullah’s speeches and Queen Rania’s English speeches as they frequently speak about youth and defend their rights in the political arena. For example, in one of King Abdullah’s speeches at the Economic Club of Chicago and the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, he said: “Our focus is on empowering youth” (11 June, 2004), and in one of Queen Rania’s speeches at the Inaugural Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, she said “Jordan is determined to create a future of opportunity and prosperity for our youth” (8 September, 2007).

Research Title: Passing Thoughts: A Collection of Feelings Recollected in Disturbance. A Collection of Poetry

Author: Mohammad Al-Jayyousi, Published Year: 2016

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: Mohammad Aljayyousi is professor of English at Philadelphia University - Jordan. He has a PhD in Literary Criticism from IUP. His research interests include postmodernism, film studies and digital literary studies. He also writes poetry. Besides his academic work and creative writing, he is an independent artist and filmmaker. He has published translated poems and a number of articles.

Research Title: No Season of Migration to the West: Theorizing the Non-Western in the Writings of Larry Neal

Author: Mohammad Al-Jayyousi, Published Year: 2017

Journal of African American Studies,

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: The study discusses the role the non-Western and its theorization play in the discourse of the BAM movement, taking the writings of Larry Neal as a case study. The study starts with explaining its historicizing approach which situates both the texts under study and the approach itself in their historical context showing both limitations and advantages. Then, a number of theoretical techniques and strategies used by Neal to theorize the non-Western, namely, the epistemological departure from the West, glorifying popular culture, and activism, are discussed in detail. The study then argues that the discourse of Larry Neal might well fit within the notion of postocoloniality and concludes with a deconstructive critique of the notion of the non-Western and proposes a substitute term, “De-westernization,” which might solve the inner contradictions in the discourse.

Research Title: Enter the Digital: Emergent Materiality and the Digitization of Literary Texts

Author: Mohammad Al-Jayyousi, Published Year: 2017

Digital Studies / Le champ numérique,

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: The study has two main parts: the first one reviews the current scholarship and theories about the materiality of text in print and digital form exemplified in the works of Johanna Drucker, Jerome McGann, Matthew Kirschenbaum, G. Thomas Tanselle and D. F. McKenzie and then presents a hybrid model of materiality that is comprehensive and practical. This model is designed to make the most use of the capacities of the digital medium and it stems from an understanding of the material repercussions of the migration from print to digital. The second part elaborates on the elements of the codex book and overviews the history of the novel genre. This is to prepare a basis for a prototype for digitizing novels, called iNovel. The last part of the study presents a detailed description of the prototype and its different tools. This prototype serves as a realization of the theoretical model described earlier.

Research Title: The Symbol of the Veil in Mohja Kahf’s the Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

Author: Areen Ghazi Khalifeh, Published Year: 2016

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science,

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: This paper discusses the symbol of the veil in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf from a postcolonial critical perspective. It argues that the symbol of the veil is not universal as many Western theorists and feminists aver. The veil is not a sign of oppression but rather a shifting signifier with multiple meanings. In the novel, it does not stand only for heritage and Islamic identity, but also it is a feminist, political, idealistic, and a revolutionary symbol as well as a symbol of love. The veil’s symbolic meaning varies according to the protagonist’s geographical and psychological experience. Moreover, the rhythmic fluctuation between veiling and unveiling resembles her oscillation between different identities. By deconstructing the concept of the veil, we actually deconstruct the concept of strangeness in general, and the feminist strangeness in particular.

Keywords: Arab-American Contemporary Fiction, Feminism, Mohja Kahf, Muslim Women, Postcolonialism, Veil

Research Title: The Law of the Father in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Author: Areen Ghazi Khalifeh, Published Year: 2016

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 4

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: This paper discusses Virginia Woolf’s two novels To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway in the light of a third-wave feminism, namely from a Kristevan perspective. It argues that the existence of the law of the father and the symbolic is extremely important for Woolf as a writer and for the characters of the two novels who are artists. The absence of Woolf’s real father does not cancel his symbolic authority. On the contrary, it creates a stronger presence of his power in the life of Woolf, the person and the writer. The artists in the novels also cannot create without a patriarchal structure. Lily Briscoe and Clarissa could rescue their art by clinging to the father while Septimus couldn’t save his art or life as he relinquishes the symbolic. This does not mean that the father cannot be challenged, but it means that the semiotic that erupts in the novels should parallel the symbolic or should be within its context.

Keywords: Artist, Kristeva, the patriarchal system, the semiotic, the symbolic, third-wave feminism, Woolf

Research Title: A Poetic Crisis: The Abject in Naguib Mahfouz's The Beggar

Author: Areen Ghazi Khalifeh, Published Year: 2014

Dirasat - Human and Social Sciences, 9

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: This article discusses the abject in Naguib Mahfouz's The Beggar, and how it is related to the poetic crisis of its protagonist. It uses Julia Kristeva's definition of the abject, which means an impure maternal element and a negative force, and its related term, abjection, which refers to being on a liminal space between the animalistic and the cultural and between the semiotic and the symbolic. Because Omar Hamzawi quit writing poetry, he could not sublimate the abject other within him. Immersed in the abject, he suffers from symptomatic depression and he himself becomes abject. His body becomes his poetic text disintegrating into nothingness. He tries to commit suicide in order to relapse to a pre-linguistic space where he achieves a union with the m/other. However, he fails to do so and returns to the symbolic by recalling a poetic line.

Keywords: Naguib Mahfouz, The Beggar

Research Title: Singing Out of the Duo: Kristeva’s Oriental Perspectives Toward Islam

Author: Areen Ghazi Khalifeh, Published Year: 2015

Faculty: Arts

Abstract: In her criticism of Kristeva’s About Chinese Women, Gayatri Spivak attacks the author’s virulent attitude towards Chinese women. Spivak contends that although Kristeva tries with “primitivistic reverence” to applaud the matrilineal social structure in ancient China versus the patrilineal fabric of the Western world (160), she, as a First World feminist and a privileged informant, defines international feminism from a Eurocentric point of view, giving priority to the West over the East. Kristeva, who adopts the concept of abjection and the “creative” uncertainty of borders, whether psychic or social, tries herself, not only in the above-mentioned book, but everywhere in her oeuvre to separate between the East and the West, between “Europe and the third world” (Kristeva, Incredible 106), between the free, liberal, and secular Western women with “access to the linguistic subtleties of Molière and Proust” and the “daughters of Maghrebin immigrants wear[ing] the Muslim scarf [chador] to school” (Kristeva, Nations 36), or more precisely between “Europe and Jewish Community,” on the one hand, and the Arabs and Muslims, on the other, “us” and “them.” My purpose is to show that Kristeva, contrary to many of the convictions and ideals of her critical theory, tries to juxtapose Islam prejudicially with Christianity and Judaism as the major elements of European culture.

Keywords: Kristeva, orientalism, postcolonialism, Islam