Alif: Journal Of Comparative Poetics, No. 42

<p><b>A wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary collection of essays that decenter, critique, and problematize predominant notions of the meaning of mortality for human creativity</b><br><br>This issue of <i>Alif </i>explores the ways in which humans have come to confront their mortality across time and space. Contributions question the nature of loss, grief, and the possibility of an afterlife. Is death only an interlude? Perhaps simply the end? How have people used literature and the arts to conceptualize its relentless presence in our existence?<br><br>The articles in this issue decenter, critique, and problematize predominant notions of the meaning of mortality for human creativity. They provide a wide scope of responses to mortality, anthropologically, philosophically, and psychologically. They shed light on different cultural receptions of loss, annihilation, and mortality, ranging from India to Yemen, Palestine to Iraq, the Island of Lampedusa to the war-ravished city of Beirut, among many other locales. Death is dealt with in an intimate fashion through the exploration and reinterpretation of modern and classical elegiac poetry, children’s picturebooks, fictional accounts of war, grief, and displacement, and dramatic treatments of dying and the afterlife.<br><br><b>Contributors:</b> <br><b>Hajjaj Abu Jabr</b>, Egyptian Academy of Arts, Cairo, Egypt<br><b>Karam AbuSehly</b>, Beni-Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt<br><b>Hala Amin</b>, Beni-Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt<br><b>Shaimaa El-Ateek</b>, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia<br><b>Mohamed Birairi</b>, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt, and American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt<br><b>Elliott Colla</b>, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA<br><b>Saeed Elmasry</b>, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt<br><b>Shaimaa Gohar</b>, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt<br><b>Walid El Khachab</b>, York University, Toronto, Canada<br><b>Yasmine Motawy</b>, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt<br><b>Dani Nassif</b>, University of Münster, Münster, Germany<br><b>Andrea Maria Negri</b>, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany<br><b>Marwa Ramadan</b>, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt<br><b>Caroline Rooney</b>, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom<br><b>Tania Al Saadi</b>, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden<br><b>May Telmissany</b>, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada<br><b>Shahla Ujayli</b>, American University of Madaba, Madaba, Jordan</p>