Description: This issue of Alif explores drama in its many manifestations---textual plays, performances, folk drama, choreographed story-telling, staged poetry recitals, and protest songs--as well as presenting modes of directing and production, comparative dramaturgy, specialized theater journals, experimental and independent troupes, testimonies and interviews. The issue covers dramatic works from eighteenth-century France to twenty-first century Britain and covers geographically Senegal to Lebanon, the US to China, while highlighting major dramatists from Egypt, Syria, and Morocco. The translations in this issue cover manifestos towards a new Arab Theater and an introduction to the recently published plays of Frantz Fanon.
Brief description: Ferial Ghazoul is an Iraqi scholar, critic, and translator. She is professor of English and comparative literature at the American University in Cairo and editor of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics. She has written extensively on medieval literature in comparative context, on modernism in Europe, on postcolonialism, and on gender studies. She has translated modern Arabic poetry and fiction to English and critical theory from English and French to Arabic.