Karen Boswall | Canterbury Christ Church University (original) (raw)

Papers by Karen Boswall

Proa : Revista de Antropologia e Arte, Mar 1, 2024

Following Mozambique's independence from Portugal in 1975, both music and cinema were seen as ess... more Following Mozambique's independence from Portugal in 1975, both music and cinema were seen as essential tools in the revolutionary construction of a new and unified national identity. A National Film Institute was created to produce and distribute films throughout the country, and in a country with 43 different languages and high levels of non-literacy, it was found that musical films were effective at transcending the cultural and linguistic barriers of the colonially divided nation. One film that exemplifies the importance of musical films at this time, is the ethnographic and reflexive musical odyssey Sing My Brother-Help Me to Sing (CANTA, 1981). This multi-modal paper focuses on a scene in this film where a man and a woman play music together in northern Mozambique to reflect on how community musicking through film contributed to the passing of knowledge then, and how forty years later 30 young Mozambicans produced their multimodal, feminist, musical and equally decolonial response.

Intervention, Nov 1, 2015

The ongoing con£ict in Syria has provoked mass exodus on an unprecedented scale, with over four m... more The ongoing con£ict in Syria has provoked mass exodus on an unprecedented scale, with over four million Syrian refugees now registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Most of these refugees £ed across the borders to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Turkey, where the vast majority of Syrian refugees now live outside of the camps, their priorities and coping mechanisms shifting due to their protracted displacement. The ethnographic study presented here focuses on the experiences and emotions of the women and adolescent girls living in continued and uncertain displacement in the Jordanian border towns of Irbid and Ramtha. Presented within a historical and cultural context, and drawing on the refugees' own personal narratives, this paper o¡ers an insight into the perspectives of Syrian women of di¡erent ages and social backgrounds as they share some of their thoughts and feelings around their prolonged separation, and di¡erent levels of hardship, vulnerability and isolation.

Social Dynamics-a Journal of The Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town, May 4, 2017

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Boswall, Karen and Al Akash, Ruba (2017) Liste... more Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Boswall, Karen and Al Akash, Ruba (2017) Listening, resistance and mobile phone playlists: musical listening practices of Syrian women living as refugees in northern Jordan. Social Dynamics, 43 (2). pp. 167-183.

Institut français d’études anatoliennes eBooks, Oct 4, 2016

Detailed findings can be found in the full paper. Al Akash, R. & Boswall, K., "Listening to the v... more Detailed findings can be found in the full paper. Al Akash, R. & Boswall, K., "Listening to the voices of Syrian women and girls living as urban refugees in Northern Jordan-a narrative ethnography of early marriage," karenboswall.com.

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Aug 24, 2016

Migration, Mobilities and the Arab Spring

The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights

This presentation draws on extracts from a film made in 1997 that came out of a creative particip... more This presentation draws on extracts from a film made in 1997 that came out of a creative participatory process with men and women from a Mozambican village called Ilha Josina in the years following the peace accord that followed 16 years of a brutal civil war (1976-1992). At the end of the war, rapists and murderes and their victims on both sides - often whose crimes were known to one another - had to learn to build their lives again and live together side by side. When the guns fell silent, the tales of death and brutality that had been shared across the country throughout the war, fell silent too; the solution embraced by communities country-wide involved keeping the memories and horror of the war to themselves, shared only in the privacy of their own homes. Through ritual cleansing and a commitment to public silence, a new harmony was sought amongst the entire community, a harmony that was negotiated between the living - and the dead. Women played an important role in generating ...

Following Independence in Mozambique in 1975, the newly formed National Film Institute conducted ... more Following Independence in Mozambique in 1975, the newly formed National Film Institute conducted a study into the reception of the audio-visual material being produced and distributed throughout the country by the new generation of Mozambican film-makers. The study, published in 1984, concluded that, for a country with 46 different languages, and high levels of illiteracy, one of the most effective cinematic languages their new generation of local film-makers could use was one drawing extensively on the language of music. Films based on images and music could transcend the cultural and linguistic barriers of the colonially divided nation. Soon after this study was published a civil war brought the training of young Mozambican film-makers to a grinding halt and the report on effective cinematic language for social change was all but forgotten. Only now, as peace and economic growth are bringing relative stability to the country, the next generation of Mozambican filmmakers have retur...

“Guests and Aliens”: Re-Configuring New Mobilities in the Eastern Mediterranean After 2011 - with a special focus on Syrian refugees

Social Dynamics, May 4, 2017