Franck Salameh | Boston College (original) (raw)
Books by Franck Salameh
"Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern... more "Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the region's problems. The book is an attempt at rehabilitating and bringing back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. "Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" has a special focus on Lebanon, a "Christian homeland" by the telling of many, because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region's template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.
Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician” is an ... more Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician” is an inquiry into modern Middle Eastern history and Lebanese cultural and political life as incarnated in the ideas, times, and works of Charles Corm (1894–1963). As the poet laureate and guiding spirit of the “Young Phoenicians” movement, Charles Corm advocated for identity narratives that are often dismissed in the prevalent Arab nationalist paradigms dominating the canon of modern Middle Eastern history and political thought. But Corm was much more than a man of letters with a patriotic mission. As an entrepreneur, orator, philanthropist, and patron of the arts, he commanded great influence on Lebanese intellectual production and political life. In many respects, Charles Corm was “the conscience” of Lebanon during its transition from Ottoman domination to independent statehood. This book parses Corm as Patriot, Entrepreneur, Humanist, and Poet.
Papers by Franck Salameh
<p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" o... more <p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" of modern Lebanese literature. Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Nadia Tuéni (1935–83), Charles Corm (1894–1963), and Anis Freyha (1903–93), whose works spanned the first century of Lebanon's modern history, wrote tirelessly, extolling the glory of ancient Lebanon, recalling the "golden age" of its Phoenician ancestors and the era spanning "classical antiquity," expressing both hope and concern for the future of a nascent political entity gushing out of a region torn by conflict, irredentism, and resentful nationalisms. Their works reflect elements and profiles of Lebanese life, Lebanese history, and Lebanese landscapes unfolding with both precision and symbolism.</p>
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 9, 2018
<p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" o... more <p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" of modern Lebanese literature. Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Nadia Tuéni (1935–83), Charles Corm (1894–1963), and Anis Freyha (1903–93), whose works spanned the first century of Lebanon's modern history, wrote tirelessly, extolling the glory of ancient Lebanon, recalling the "golden age" of its Phoenician ancestors and the era spanning "classical antiquity," expressing both hope and concern for the future of a nascent political entity gushing out of a region torn by conflict, irredentism, and resentful nationalisms. Their works reflect elements and profiles of Lebanese life, Lebanese history, and Lebanese landscapes unfolding with both precision and symbolism.</p>
The Other Middle East
This chapter discusses the various meanings of the term Levant. The term, which was traditionally... more This chapter discusses the various meanings of the term Levant. The term, which was traditionally used in reference to lands around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, often distinguished from strictly or exclusively “Arab” or “Muslim” lands, has come to carry a number of negative stigmas. For instance, being a Levantine was to belong to no community and to possess nothing of one's own. However, the children of the Levant seldom viewed things in such a negative manner. Levantines, particularly the intellectuals considered in this volume, saw themselves as sophisticated, urbane cosmopolitan, iconoclastic mongrels, intimately acquainted with multiple cultures, skillfully wielding multiple languages, and elegantly straddling multiple traditions, identities, and civilizations.
Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Oct 24, 2022
Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern... more Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the region's problems. The book is an attempt to rehabilitate and bring back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East has a special focus on Lebanon, a "Christian homeland," because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region's template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.Title supplied by cataloger
Joukowsky Institute Cookbook II, 2022
Joukowsky Institute Cookbook II, 2022
The Other Middle East
Syria's literati have been producing work alluding to the nebulous nature of their modern sta... more Syria's literati have been producing work alluding to the nebulous nature of their modern state, and perhaps foretelling its unmaking; not because multi-ethnic nation-states are by their very nature doomed to failure, but because inherently multi-ethnic states preening themselves to be unitary, monocultural, and monolingual, must sooner or later come to terms with their diversity, and must find ways to valorize and celebrate that diversity. This chapter features authors that attempted to do their part in acknowledging textured identities. These include Nizar Qabbani (1923–98), recognized as the Arabs' leading feminist and advocate of women's rights; and Syro-Lebanese writer Ali Ahmad Said Ispir—known primarily by his nom de plume, Adonis (b. 1930).
The Other Middle East
This chapter examines the works of Arab and Israeli authors who celebrate diversity, humanity, an... more This chapter examines the works of Arab and Israeli authors who celebrate diversity, humanity, and humanism. These include Anglo-Palestinian novelist Samir el-Youssef (b. 1965), Fawaz Turki (b. 1940), and polyglot Israeli essayist Jacqueline Kahanoff (1917–79). Fawaz Turki and Samir el-Youssef, although outside the circle of those considered paragons of Palestinian literature, are exquisite—albeit contrasting—representatives of the Palestinian condition and the Palestinians' intellectual trajectories of the past fifty years. Rather than being representatives of a single state, they are mostly ensconced in a state of liminality, straddling Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other areas of dispersion, both East and West. Kahanoff's relevance is that her work, her thought, and the intellectual school to which she belonged are being excavated, rehabilitated, and valorized by both Israelis and Palestinians today.
The Other Middle East, 2019
The Other Middle East, 2018
This chapter analyzes the work of Ali Salem (1936–2015) and Taha Husayn (1889–1973). Husayn, the ... more This chapter analyzes the work of Ali Salem (1936–2015) and Taha Husayn (1889–1973). Husayn, the doyen of modern Arabic literature, and Salem, a leading Arabic-language playwright, are considered two of the main avatars of Pharaonism; the former dominating the early decades of the twentieth century, the latter commanding influence in the early twenty-first. In The Future of Culture in Egypt (1938), Husayn made the case for an Egyptian Egypt and an Egyptian identity separate and distinct from the worlds of Islam and Arab nationalism. Salem's 2004 satire, The Odd Man and the Sea, presents a spacious notion of the Mediterranean as a sea of culture—fluid, inclusive, pantheist by its very nature, and of which Egypt is a vital current.
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2018
The mere mention of Henri Lammens, Society of Jesus (SJ), provokes unease, notorious as this mili... more The mere mention of Henri Lammens, Society of Jesus (SJ), provokes unease, notorious as this militant "priest-scholar" has become in postcolonial circles. Yet his failings notwithstanding, Lammens has been a victim of the academic conceits and biases of postmodernist postcolonialists through whose prisms he often emerges as a cantankerous, inflammatory, Christian polemicist, hell-bent on defaming an otherwise blameless, innocent, beatific Islam. This article suggests that a more nuanced gaze be cast at Henri Lammens, the man and missionary, before judging his scholarship; a corrective of sorts, shedding light on the life and times of a Belgian boy, who traveled East at the tender age of fifteen, who fell into the snare of Near Eastern Christians, and who set out to write their history and restore their suppressed memories-doing so not without the passion and affection of the neophyte.
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2016
This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's... more This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's Jewish community and examining inter-Lebanese relations where Lebanese Jews had once taken center stage. Special consideration is given to the "rise" and "fall" of Lebanese Jewry during the first half of the twentieth century as a group that was uniquely Lebanese and, in that sense, uniquely distinct from other Lebanese and other Jews elsewhere in the Middle East. The story of Lebanese Jewry here is told primarily from within the context of Jewish-Christian-and to some extent Jewish-Muslim-relations in Lebanon and Lebanese-Jewish responses to news and events surrounding the destruction of European Jewry, as related and reflected upon in Lebanon's Jewish organ Al-Aalam al-Isra'iili.
"Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern... more "Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the region's problems. The book is an attempt at rehabilitating and bringing back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. "Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East" has a special focus on Lebanon, a "Christian homeland" by the telling of many, because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region's template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.
Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician” is an ... more Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician” is an inquiry into modern Middle Eastern history and Lebanese cultural and political life as incarnated in the ideas, times, and works of Charles Corm (1894–1963). As the poet laureate and guiding spirit of the “Young Phoenicians” movement, Charles Corm advocated for identity narratives that are often dismissed in the prevalent Arab nationalist paradigms dominating the canon of modern Middle Eastern history and political thought. But Corm was much more than a man of letters with a patriotic mission. As an entrepreneur, orator, philanthropist, and patron of the arts, he commanded great influence on Lebanese intellectual production and political life. In many respects, Charles Corm was “the conscience” of Lebanon during its transition from Ottoman domination to independent statehood. This book parses Corm as Patriot, Entrepreneur, Humanist, and Poet.
<p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" o... more <p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" of modern Lebanese literature. Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Nadia Tuéni (1935–83), Charles Corm (1894–1963), and Anis Freyha (1903–93), whose works spanned the first century of Lebanon's modern history, wrote tirelessly, extolling the glory of ancient Lebanon, recalling the "golden age" of its Phoenician ancestors and the era spanning "classical antiquity," expressing both hope and concern for the future of a nascent political entity gushing out of a region torn by conflict, irredentism, and resentful nationalisms. Their works reflect elements and profiles of Lebanese life, Lebanese history, and Lebanese landscapes unfolding with both precision and symbolism.</p>
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 3, 2019
Yale University Press eBooks, Jan 9, 2018
<p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" o... more <p>This chapter features Lebanese authors spanning the period of the "pioneers" of modern Lebanese literature. Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Nadia Tuéni (1935–83), Charles Corm (1894–1963), and Anis Freyha (1903–93), whose works spanned the first century of Lebanon's modern history, wrote tirelessly, extolling the glory of ancient Lebanon, recalling the "golden age" of its Phoenician ancestors and the era spanning "classical antiquity," expressing both hope and concern for the future of a nascent political entity gushing out of a region torn by conflict, irredentism, and resentful nationalisms. Their works reflect elements and profiles of Lebanese life, Lebanese history, and Lebanese landscapes unfolding with both precision and symbolism.</p>
The Other Middle East
This chapter discusses the various meanings of the term Levant. The term, which was traditionally... more This chapter discusses the various meanings of the term Levant. The term, which was traditionally used in reference to lands around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, often distinguished from strictly or exclusively “Arab” or “Muslim” lands, has come to carry a number of negative stigmas. For instance, being a Levantine was to belong to no community and to possess nothing of one's own. However, the children of the Levant seldom viewed things in such a negative manner. Levantines, particularly the intellectuals considered in this volume, saw themselves as sophisticated, urbane cosmopolitan, iconoclastic mongrels, intimately acquainted with multiple cultures, skillfully wielding multiple languages, and elegantly straddling multiple traditions, identities, and civilizations.
Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Oct 24, 2022
Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern... more Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the region's problems. The book is an attempt to rehabilitate and bring back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East has a special focus on Lebanon, a "Christian homeland," because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region's template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.Title supplied by cataloger
Joukowsky Institute Cookbook II, 2022
Joukowsky Institute Cookbook II, 2022
The Other Middle East
Syria's literati have been producing work alluding to the nebulous nature of their modern sta... more Syria's literati have been producing work alluding to the nebulous nature of their modern state, and perhaps foretelling its unmaking; not because multi-ethnic nation-states are by their very nature doomed to failure, but because inherently multi-ethnic states preening themselves to be unitary, monocultural, and monolingual, must sooner or later come to terms with their diversity, and must find ways to valorize and celebrate that diversity. This chapter features authors that attempted to do their part in acknowledging textured identities. These include Nizar Qabbani (1923–98), recognized as the Arabs' leading feminist and advocate of women's rights; and Syro-Lebanese writer Ali Ahmad Said Ispir—known primarily by his nom de plume, Adonis (b. 1930).
The Other Middle East
This chapter examines the works of Arab and Israeli authors who celebrate diversity, humanity, an... more This chapter examines the works of Arab and Israeli authors who celebrate diversity, humanity, and humanism. These include Anglo-Palestinian novelist Samir el-Youssef (b. 1965), Fawaz Turki (b. 1940), and polyglot Israeli essayist Jacqueline Kahanoff (1917–79). Fawaz Turki and Samir el-Youssef, although outside the circle of those considered paragons of Palestinian literature, are exquisite—albeit contrasting—representatives of the Palestinian condition and the Palestinians' intellectual trajectories of the past fifty years. Rather than being representatives of a single state, they are mostly ensconced in a state of liminality, straddling Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other areas of dispersion, both East and West. Kahanoff's relevance is that her work, her thought, and the intellectual school to which she belonged are being excavated, rehabilitated, and valorized by both Israelis and Palestinians today.
The Other Middle East, 2019
The Other Middle East, 2018
This chapter analyzes the work of Ali Salem (1936–2015) and Taha Husayn (1889–1973). Husayn, the ... more This chapter analyzes the work of Ali Salem (1936–2015) and Taha Husayn (1889–1973). Husayn, the doyen of modern Arabic literature, and Salem, a leading Arabic-language playwright, are considered two of the main avatars of Pharaonism; the former dominating the early decades of the twentieth century, the latter commanding influence in the early twenty-first. In The Future of Culture in Egypt (1938), Husayn made the case for an Egyptian Egypt and an Egyptian identity separate and distinct from the worlds of Islam and Arab nationalism. Salem's 2004 satire, The Odd Man and the Sea, presents a spacious notion of the Mediterranean as a sea of culture—fluid, inclusive, pantheist by its very nature, and of which Egypt is a vital current.
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2018
The mere mention of Henri Lammens, Society of Jesus (SJ), provokes unease, notorious as this mili... more The mere mention of Henri Lammens, Society of Jesus (SJ), provokes unease, notorious as this militant "priest-scholar" has become in postcolonial circles. Yet his failings notwithstanding, Lammens has been a victim of the academic conceits and biases of postmodernist postcolonialists through whose prisms he often emerges as a cantankerous, inflammatory, Christian polemicist, hell-bent on defaming an otherwise blameless, innocent, beatific Islam. This article suggests that a more nuanced gaze be cast at Henri Lammens, the man and missionary, before judging his scholarship; a corrective of sorts, shedding light on the life and times of a Belgian boy, who traveled East at the tender age of fifteen, who fell into the snare of Near Eastern Christians, and who set out to write their history and restore their suppressed memories-doing so not without the passion and affection of the neophyte.
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2016
This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's... more This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's Jewish community and examining inter-Lebanese relations where Lebanese Jews had once taken center stage. Special consideration is given to the "rise" and "fall" of Lebanese Jewry during the first half of the twentieth century as a group that was uniquely Lebanese and, in that sense, uniquely distinct from other Lebanese and other Jews elsewhere in the Middle East. The story of Lebanese Jewry here is told primarily from within the context of Jewish-Christian-and to some extent Jewish-Muslim-relations in Lebanon and Lebanese-Jewish responses to news and events surrounding the destruction of European Jewry, as related and reflected upon in Lebanon's Jewish organ Al-Aalam al-Isra'iili.
Middle Eastern Studies, 2016
ABSTRACT This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the ... more ABSTRACT This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's Jewish community and examining inter-Lebanese relations where Lebanese Jews take centre stage. Like Lebanon's Christians – Maronites in the main – Lebanon's Jews reveal themselves to have played an important role in the establishment of the Lebanese republic as a ‘confederation of minorities’. But the role of Lebanese Jews was a discreet, low-pitched one, and their ‘voices’ and ‘stories’ seem to have been left out of traditional history books. This article is an attempt at correcting a lacuna of exclusion vis-à-vis Lebanese Jews, mending their memory and restoring them to their rightful place as a foundational element of modern Lebanese history and socio-cultural production.
Bustan: The Middle East Book Review, 2012
This essay highlights Syrian thinker Adonis' intellectual and ideological journey from his youthf... more This essay highlights Syrian thinker Adonis' intellectual and ideological journey from his youthful support of Syrian nationalism to his embrace of an encompassing Arab national identity, while outlining his personal history. Recently, Adonis has expressed his commitment to fostering pluralism across the Middle East. This endorsement of a more pluralist setting invokes the concept of the Levant, a political and cultural idea probed in this article. Levantinism and its practical applications in Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel reveal what may be the true spirit of the Middle East: a multilayered crucible of identities, supplanting the notion of an exclusivist Arab identity.
A Boston College interview about Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East; The Case for Le... more A Boston College interview about Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East; The Case for Lebanon
A book talk at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Tufts University, on the subje... more A book talk at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Tufts University, on the subject of Charles Corm and the Young Phoenicians
In the context of Middle Eastern Jewry in modern times, seldom is there any mention (beyond the c... more In the context of Middle Eastern Jewry in modern times, seldom is there any mention (beyond the cursory) of the Jews of Lebanon. And if at all acknowledged, they are usually identified mainly in the context of Maronite-Zionist relations (during and immediately following the Mandate period), or within larger themes dealing with the destruction of European Jewry, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the prevalent narratives about the expulsions of Jews from Arab lands post-1948. The purpose of the present paper is to remedy this lacuna of neglect, revealing the Jews of Lebanon as a longstanding Lebanese community, similar to and distinct from other Lebanese communities, and likewise similar to and distinct from neighboring Jews of “Arab lands.” For one, the Lebanon of the first half of the twentieth-century was not an “Arab state” in the traditional connotations of the term, and did not consider itself to be an “Arab state”—indeed, the majority of Lebanese to this day still take great umbrage at being considered Arab… Therefore, what might have befallen the “Jews of Arab Lands” in “the shadow of the Holocaust” certainly did not apply in the case of Lebanon, and Lebanese Jewish life appears to have been markedly different from Jewish life elsewhere in the Arab-defined Middle East. Consequently, Lebanese Jews, their stories, their status, their socio-cultural production, and their political allegiances cannot, and indeed ought not, be folded into the same complex of events and circumstances as other Jews of the Middle East. In this sense, although naturally preoccupied with the goings-on in the nearby Yishuv, the Zionist project, and news of the destruction of European Jewry, Lebanese Jews of the first half of the twentieth-century had “their own fish to fry”: They were by and large invested in their Lebanese experiment, competing for their place in Lebanese society, and preoccupied with issues pertaining to securing their own piece of the “pie” in Lebanon’s fractious system of power-sharing.
Eyal Zisser's review essay of "Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Le... more Eyal Zisser's review essay of "Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon" and "Religion, National Identity, and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of Islamism."
Review of "Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East; The Case for Lebanon"
This volume examines the use of language and memory as a means of understanding culture. It also ... more This volume examines the use of language and memory as a means of understanding culture. It also asks questions about how assumptions about the use of Arabic inform western beliefs about the Middle East. Salameh presents a fascinating look at the way in which culture and identity are delineated in the Middle East. This is a book that is as much about history as it is an ethnological report on Lebanon and the uniqueness of this country. There are intriguing glimpses into the vibrant past of the Mediterranean region that help the reader to build a more capacious view of how the Middle East developed to express the diversity it does today. Meticulously researched and intriguingly written, "Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon" invites the reader voraciously continue to turn the pages in expedition of a world rarely presented to the western audience.