Dr Anissa Daoudi has been awarded for the conference 'Narrating and translating rape/violence in wartime: the role of language(s)' she is organising and that will take place in Algiers, Algeria on 2 September 2014.
Systematic collective rape, kidnapping, and murder of women are common in all wars, of course; the war against civilians in Algeria in the 1990’s (during the Black Decade) is no exception. Back in history, during the Algerian War, women also have been subject to rape and torture by the coloniser (French). The only difference is that this time the rapist in the civil war (1990’s) is no longer the French but the Algerian (Islamist/fundamentalist). Also the current events in the Arab region the so-called ‘Arab Spring/revolution’ characterised by interesting reactions, varying from stories about the Egyptian government subjecting female participants to ‘virginity tests’, to horrific stories about collective rape in Maydan al Tahrir (Cairo), to calls by a preacher for sexual holy war in what is known as jihad al nikah (which is basically offering sexual services to comfort fighters against the Syrian regime).
This conference is about Arab women and how they narrate and translate, highlighting the medium used. By medium, we mean the language used (e.g. MSA, dialects, eArabic) and how it manifests in different genres (e.g. popular culture, literature in its broadest sense). The aim of the conference is to highlight the diversity and variety of readings and interpretations. It is about the negotiation of meanings and equivalences of different modes and vehicles to achieve (dis)similar understandings across languages, cultures, generations, media, and genres.