Papers by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
International Journal of Media Culture and Literature, 2021
During the Syrian uprising in 2011, the regime as well as opposition activists relied on the Inte... more During the Syrian uprising in 2011, the regime as well as opposition activists relied on the Internet to spread their accounts of what Syria was going through and to project their agendas, which transformed the Internet in Syria into a contested political arena. 2 The regime's old censorship tactics proved unsuccessful in curbing the dominance of national and international media via TV and the Internet. The paper finds substantial differences between the content, rhetoric, and approach to the making and spreading of narratives and propaganda in the Syrian Uprising. While activists used the Internet to inform, the regime and its supporters used it to control and brainwash. Both parties targeted different audiences for completely different purposes. This paper will perform content analysis of online social media content that is produced by the Syrian regime and its supporters to articulate how they promoted their narrative about the uprising. In addition, it will analyze antiregime content that aimed to counter the regime's version of the uprising. The goal is to identify the target of both narratives and situate online discourse within the larger historical and political contexts. It will address how the regime exploits the Internet as an authoritative, punitive tool not only to control the news about the atrocities it committed but also to maintain and mainstream consistent propaganda that primarily targeted its supporters. While the regime used the Internet and media to influence its loyalists, anti-regime activists posted videos on social media documenting the regime's attacks on Syrian towns as an attempt to humanize the struggle and allow the world to hear their voices. It is as if the two parties spoke different languages in the same society and country.
World Literature Today, 2018
Voices of the Arab Spring, 2015
The war-torn Syria in Najib George Awad's poetry is a country of many cultures and fates. A Chris... more The war-torn Syria in Najib George Awad's poetry is a country of many cultures and fates. A Christian Syrian from the port city of Lattakia, Awad has Syriac-Aramaic roots and is a prolific poet who embraces the multiethnic wealth of the Syrian experience. As a Syrian expatriate, he shares the pain and devastation of the many millions who have been displaced and forced to flee. But as a Christian theologian with a multicultural Syrian background, he brings to Arabic poetry fresh energy and rhythm.
With the still-ongoing Arab Spring that has passed by five Arab countries, the basic slogan
has ... more With the still-ongoing Arab Spring that has passed by five Arab countries, the basic slogan
has been freedom. With a close scrutiny at the social movements that led to the uprising, we
notice that the educated youth have been part and parcel in igniting the uprisings. However,
this youth has rarely had any temporal or spatial opportunities to manifest or express their
callings for freedom, so where does that motivation come from? How can we understand and
articulate the youth’s role in the uprisings? Were education and literature an eye opener for the
youth? Had literature, in all of its forms, been an impact on the early steps of the callings for
freedom? How has the Arab youth been implemented or described in the pre-Arab Spring
narratives? This paper investigates how the social and political environment was imagined
across Egypt and Syria during the Pre-Arab Spring. I will focus on the political dimension that
spread over to the literary production in contemporary narratives; taking into account the
dichotomy between the theocratic atmosphere and the potential freedom channels- in this case
it is literature- that might have been one of the sparks that ignited the Arab Spring.
Book Reviews by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
Book Review of Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood by Reja-e Busailah, 2020
Reja-e Busailah's Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood is an extraordinary collection that presents det... more Reja-e Busailah's Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood is an extraordinary collection that presents details of a boyhood despite this boy's loss of sight at an early age. He takes the reader on a journey in time and space, into the special world of his memories that still evoke fervent longing for his roots. Busailah's journey unites him with his family, village, and with the apple, pear, cherry, orange, and grapefruit trees of his childhood, which represent inseparable constituents of his contemporary persona. He assimilates himself with the fruit and the landscape, expressing vivid memories of the simple yet passionate child that he was, saying, "I was peeling an orange to eat / on the Ides of March / it bore the bright gold of a steep sunset." His thorough, luminous recollection of the aroma of thyme, lemon, and cardamom represents an unmistakable depiction of a nostalgic memory. Busailah resurrects the forgotten Palestinian village and gives voice to the people who thrived and carried on a simple, ordinary life. Before the British occupation of Palestine, his village existed safely and happily. It was the rooster that "had a sense of curious habit which spread / a sense of security and reassurance / all over the neighborhood and beyond." He unapologetically condemns the occupation that ruined his boyhood as well as the lives of his people. It is the "Beasts of the West [who] bit them with unusual rage / and drove them yet deeper into their apartness / beasts of dogma / beasts of greed / beasts of race at its beastliest." Writing nearly eighty-five years after the 1936 revolution, the Palestinian resistance resonates in Busailah's poetry. He envisions the hopeful future of Palestine because of the younger generation. It will follow on the footsteps of their parents as mothers continue to give birth to "the new life / with the blood of the olive / and the flesh of wheat." Busailah is that new life which immortalizes Palestine through memory and poetry.
In her first novel, Amal (" Hope " in Arabic, published by Nūn Press in 2014), the young Syrian n... more In her first novel, Amal (" Hope " in Arabic, published by Nūn Press in 2014), the young Syrian novelist Dina Nisrini takes an original approach to Syrian public opinion on the Syrian uprising. In war-torn Aleppo, a city that has witnessed much violence and shelling, Nisrini explores the political situation and the rising sectarian sentiments and religious confrontations in Syrian society through the eyes of a divorced mother. The novel raises the central question of the political affiliation of the characters and its relationship to a person's values regarding justice, freedom, and gender equality. It offers a significant insight into the lives of those who are facing the repercussions of daily violence on the personal, public, and family levels.
Translation by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
Welcome to the New World , 2020
(https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250305596/welcometothenewworld)
After escapin... more (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250305596/welcometothenewworld)
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan.
Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking.
Delivered with warmth and intimacy, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan's Welcome to the New World is a wholly original view of the immigrant experience, revealing not only the trials and successes of one family but showing the spirit of a town and a country, for good and bad.
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Papers by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
has been freedom. With a close scrutiny at the social movements that led to the uprising, we
notice that the educated youth have been part and parcel in igniting the uprisings. However,
this youth has rarely had any temporal or spatial opportunities to manifest or express their
callings for freedom, so where does that motivation come from? How can we understand and
articulate the youth’s role in the uprisings? Were education and literature an eye opener for the
youth? Had literature, in all of its forms, been an impact on the early steps of the callings for
freedom? How has the Arab youth been implemented or described in the pre-Arab Spring
narratives? This paper investigates how the social and political environment was imagined
across Egypt and Syria during the Pre-Arab Spring. I will focus on the political dimension that
spread over to the literary production in contemporary narratives; taking into account the
dichotomy between the theocratic atmosphere and the potential freedom channels- in this case
it is literature- that might have been one of the sparks that ignited the Arab Spring.
Book Reviews by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
Translation by Mohammed Kadalah محمد كَدَاله
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan.
Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking.
Delivered with warmth and intimacy, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan's Welcome to the New World is a wholly original view of the immigrant experience, revealing not only the trials and successes of one family but showing the spirit of a town and a country, for good and bad.
has been freedom. With a close scrutiny at the social movements that led to the uprising, we
notice that the educated youth have been part and parcel in igniting the uprisings. However,
this youth has rarely had any temporal or spatial opportunities to manifest or express their
callings for freedom, so where does that motivation come from? How can we understand and
articulate the youth’s role in the uprisings? Were education and literature an eye opener for the
youth? Had literature, in all of its forms, been an impact on the early steps of the callings for
freedom? How has the Arab youth been implemented or described in the pre-Arab Spring
narratives? This paper investigates how the social and political environment was imagined
across Egypt and Syria during the Pre-Arab Spring. I will focus on the political dimension that
spread over to the literary production in contemporary narratives; taking into account the
dichotomy between the theocratic atmosphere and the potential freedom channels- in this case
it is literature- that might have been one of the sparks that ignited the Arab Spring.
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan.
Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking.
Delivered with warmth and intimacy, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan's Welcome to the New World is a wholly original view of the immigrant experience, revealing not only the trials and successes of one family but showing the spirit of a town and a country, for good and bad.