Amir Ali Nojoumian | Shahid Beheshti University (original) (raw)
Papers by Amir Ali Nojoumian
In this paper, we argue that Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of Cultural Trauma provides a more fru... more In this paper, we argue that Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of Cultural Trauma provides a more fruitful framework for the study of 9/11 narratives written by both EuropeanAmerican writers and hyphenated Americans with Middle Eastern backgrounds. Unlike previous studies which have focused on Homi Bhabha’s notion of “interstitial perspectives,” we will focus on how Alexander’s theory helps us understand how European-American writers perceived and interpreted the crisis of 9/11, and how hyphenated American writers reacted to the dominant discourse on this tragic incident. Therefore, the present study is an endeavor to delineate the tenets of Alexander’s theory and to show how this theory helps us see the fundamental arguments and counterarguments on 9/11 offered by two different bodies of writers. Consequently, the first part of the paper will focus on the subtleties of Alexander’s theory and its ability to provide us with a framework within which we can analyze these different narrativ...
International Research in Children's Literature, 2021
Iranian women's first attempt at changing their social conditions dates back to the Qajar era... more Iranian women's first attempt at changing their social conditions dates back to the Qajar era, continuing up to the present time. In recent years, the traditional discourse on women in Iran has cha...
Journal of Language and Translation, 2013
Even though some scholars do not agree on the direct link between globalization and translation, ... more Even though some scholars do not agree on the direct link between globalization and translation, most others believe that the process of globalization has influenced translation practices over time. The present research, thus, endeavors to probe into the nature of these impacts and shed some light on the manifestations of globalization trend in the translations of literary texts. To this aim, the Persian translations of three novels written by Ernest Hemingway were selected. Two time spans, the second and the third waves of globalization, were also selected to portray if the globalization trend has influenced translations of the novels. Then, the suggested framework by the same authors was employed in the analysis of Persian translations of the novels in order to demonstrate if the suggested model was applicable in the analysis of English-Persian literary texts. The study revealed that some changes occurred in the strategies employed in the translations done during the third wave of...
Drawing from the mainly Bakhtinian theories of the grotesque and its further readings by Kristeva... more Drawing from the mainly Bakhtinian theories of the grotesque and its further readings by Kristeva, Foucault, and Bhabha, the present paper tends to examine the representation of “feminine grotesque” in one of the less discussed novels of Post-millennial Muslim diaspora, Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies (2015). Written in response to the Islamophobic aftermath of the 9/11 and London bombings, Aboulela’s postmillennial fiction is often read as an instance of Islamic Postcolonialism, in the shade of which the story’s manifestly corpographic quality is mainly neglected by the critics. An offspring of miscegenation between a Muslim African and a white non-Muslim Russian, Aboulela’s female protagonist Natasha Hussein reconfigures diasporic hybridity as seminally “monstrous,” and accordingly proposes a synthesis between the feminine abject and Muslim monstrosity. The Bakhtinian grotesque is exemplarily revitalized in Natasha’s abject body at different strata, which turns her body m...
This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history ... more This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history of mankind: 1) God’s creation of the world and the act of naming (appellation), 2) human being’s eating off the tree of knowledge and the expulsion from the garden of Eden, and 3) the building of the tower of Babel, its destruction by God, the dispersal of mankind and languages, and consequently the inevitability of translation. These stories are narrated in the light of the readings of two leading figures in the contemporary critical theory: Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Through recounting these three stories, I intend to narrate the ‘genesis’ of language and translation in three phases: Appellation: The first phase of language signifies God’s word. In this phase, God’s creation is synonymous with his Word: “In the beginning was the Word”. Human being’s act of naming other creatures becomes an imitation of God’s creation. At this stage, words (or better to say ‘names’) have no co...
In order to fix their articulations, the gendered discourses always try to legitimize their own s... more In order to fix their articulations, the gendered discourses always try to legitimize their own self dimensions and delegitimize the others’ elements; legitimation, from the semiotic-discursive point of view, is a process that hegemonizes power through discourse articulation. The authors’ aim in this paper is to investigate and identify the way in which the legitimating mechanisms of gendered discourses function in contemporary Persian story literature. Hence, they provide a deconstructive reading of the methodology of Van Leeuwen (2007) based on Laclau and Mouffe (2001) and Derrida (1983) and take advantage of a variety of linguistic tools. Then, in order to analyze the functions of these mechanisms, they go through the “Solok” and purposefully examine some of its parts. Finally, they respond to the research question about how the legitimizing mechanisms of gendered discourses operate and introduce four structures, i.e. simple, compound, complex, and chain, in those mechanisms. Mor...
Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd&# 039; hui, 2004
The Unnamable is the story of a search to define and name oneself. This article examines the role... more The Unnamable is the story of a search to define and name oneself. This article examines the role of language in this regard, elaborates the notion of 'beyond' and its possibility, and finally assesses the possibility of silence 'within' and 'beyond' language and being. I argue that silence is 'the promise' that the language of the novel constantly makes, yet is never able to fulfil. Silence (and death) paradoxically motivates language and becomes part of (inside) the language of the text while always pointing to the outside. In order to discuss the above 'signifying forces' of the novel, it seems inevitable to read the novel in the light of deconstruction.
Critical Language and Literary studies , 2021
Using paradoxical spatializations, Raymond Chandler challenges the conventional representation of... more Using paradoxical spatializations, Raymond Chandler challenges the conventional representation of the Southern California region. The coexistence of heterogeneous elements in Chandler’s novels depicts a particular kind of mid-twentieth-century noir genre. These literary spaces, under epistemological tensions, move toward heterotopic descriptions. Finally, this paper calls the literary other spaces produced by Chandler’s stories Noir Heterotopias, and concludes that Chandlerian descriptions seek to induce a sense of suspense in their spatializations.
Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age, edited by Bernard Wilson and Sharmani Patricia Gabriel, 2020
Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career with works for and about children. Despite the signif... more Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career with works for and about children. Despite the significance this early phase of his oeuvre possesses in Iranian cinema, little has been done to analyze the dynamics of ethics in these films. We argue there are two major conditions at the heart of ethics in Kiarostami’s children’s films: children are either engaged in moments of altruism which intend to fulfil their responsibility toward the “other”, or attempt to go beyond this “responsibility” by resisting the codes and laws of the “Other” to reach a sense of liberated individuality. This chapter offers a new definition of ethics in which Kiarostami does not suggest absolute ethical statements but engages the audience in ethical questions. It illustrates children’s roles in relation to adults, families, and educational systems, and claims children continue to discover ways to evade dominant discourses.
Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television, edited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick, 2019
Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been con... more Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been constructed and reconstructed significantly depending on the drastic socio-political changes of contemporary Iranian society in the past five decades. This cultural history is the story of tensions between modernity and tradition. I consider children and childhood as symbols of modernity, yet children seem to be the major victims of modernizing forces. In one decade, they are represented as little adults, while in another, they cry for understanding and tolerance. Iranian children’s cinema portrays young people as agents on a humanist quest for self-identity and freedom, and at the same time, depicted children remain as the voices of change, rebellion, and resilience.
TELL, 2007
This article is an attempt to address a major issue which is widely neglected in the area of peda... more This article is an attempt to address a major issue which is widely neglected in the area of pedagogical studies. Unfortunately, the mere focus of educational researches has been on the issue of teaching foreign languages. It is wrongly presumed that any person who is an expert on a subject – including literature – can be automatically considered as a teacher in that field. Here, the focus is on the major contemporary developments in teaching poetry and introducing several practical strategies as resource ideas for the teachers of English poetry. The importance and impact of reader-oriented theories on teaching methods is an instrumental factor and is the major concern of this article. Therefore, the article balances the theoretical issues in the field with practical advice – in the form of strategies inspired by reader-oriented theories – for the teachers of English poetry.
This essay provides, for the first time, a model for identifying and analyzing “free indirect dis... more This essay provides, for the first time, a model for identifying and analyzing “free indirect discourse” (FID) in narrative film, the most problematic mode of representing characters’ discourse which has received little attention from film theorists and critics. According to the established “dual-voice” hypothesis, FID is an ambiguous merger of the narrator’s voice and the character-focalizer’s, without one predominating over the other. The basic argument of the essay, then, is that FID occurs in a film at the moment when the spectator is not able to distinguish narratorial objectivity from characterological subjectivity. This characterizes the narrative text as polyvocal / polyphonic, leading to artistic ambiguity and such processes as “différance” and “deterritorialization.” Based on this theory, the researchers offer a detailed analysis of the textual markers and major functions of FID in filmic narratives. The model provided can be adopted for analyzing any narrative film.
این جستار شگرد روایی «گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد» را در رمان لب بر تیغ حسین سناپور (1389) بررسی میکند... more این جستار شگرد روایی «گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد» را در رمان لب بر تیغ حسین سناپور (1389) بررسی میکند. پس از بحثی دربارۀ ساختار روایت در این رمان، شیوه های چهارگانۀ بازنمود گفتمان شخصیت ها در روایت های داستانی با ذکر نمونه هایی معرفی می شوند. از آن میان، گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد اهمیتی ویژه دارد، زیرا یگانه سبک روایی است که موجب ابهام و تکثر معنای متن می شود. در بخش پایانی مقاله، با تحلیل دو قطعه از رمان لب بر تیغ نقش شگرد گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد در روایت این داستان توضیح داده می شود. بحث اصلی این مقاله آن است که کاربرد گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد موجب می شود که گفتمان راوی و گفتمان شخصیت کانونی ساز به طور همزمان در متن حضور داشته باشند، به گونه ای که نتوان یکی را بر دیگری غالب دانست. در نتیجه، گفتمان روایت میان عینیت و ذهنیت نوسان پیدا می کند و چندصدایی می شود، زیرا صدای راوی و صدای شخصیت ها مدام در حال گفت و گو با یکدیگرند.
Translation Studies
This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history ... more This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history of humanity: 1) God’s creation of the world and the act of naming (appellation), 2) human being’s eating off the tree of knowledge and the expulsion from the garden of Eden, and 3) the building of the tower of Babel, its destruction by God, the dispersal of humanity and languages, and consequently the inevitability of translation. I narrate these stories in the light of the readings of two leading figures in the contemporary critical theory: Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Through recounting these three stories, I intend to narrate the ‘genesis’ of language and translation in three phases: Appellation: The first phase of language signifies God’s word. In this phase, God’s creation is synonymous with his Word: “In the beginning was the Word”. Human being’s act of naming other creatures becomes an imitation of God’s creation. At this stage, words (or better to say ‘names’) have no co...
In this paper, we argue that Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of Cultural Trauma provides a more fru... more In this paper, we argue that Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of Cultural Trauma provides a more fruitful framework for the study of 9/11 narratives written by both EuropeanAmerican writers and hyphenated Americans with Middle Eastern backgrounds. Unlike previous studies which have focused on Homi Bhabha’s notion of “interstitial perspectives,” we will focus on how Alexander’s theory helps us understand how European-American writers perceived and interpreted the crisis of 9/11, and how hyphenated American writers reacted to the dominant discourse on this tragic incident. Therefore, the present study is an endeavor to delineate the tenets of Alexander’s theory and to show how this theory helps us see the fundamental arguments and counterarguments on 9/11 offered by two different bodies of writers. Consequently, the first part of the paper will focus on the subtleties of Alexander’s theory and its ability to provide us with a framework within which we can analyze these different narrativ...
International Research in Children's Literature, 2021
Iranian women's first attempt at changing their social conditions dates back to the Qajar era... more Iranian women's first attempt at changing their social conditions dates back to the Qajar era, continuing up to the present time. In recent years, the traditional discourse on women in Iran has cha...
Journal of Language and Translation, 2013
Even though some scholars do not agree on the direct link between globalization and translation, ... more Even though some scholars do not agree on the direct link between globalization and translation, most others believe that the process of globalization has influenced translation practices over time. The present research, thus, endeavors to probe into the nature of these impacts and shed some light on the manifestations of globalization trend in the translations of literary texts. To this aim, the Persian translations of three novels written by Ernest Hemingway were selected. Two time spans, the second and the third waves of globalization, were also selected to portray if the globalization trend has influenced translations of the novels. Then, the suggested framework by the same authors was employed in the analysis of Persian translations of the novels in order to demonstrate if the suggested model was applicable in the analysis of English-Persian literary texts. The study revealed that some changes occurred in the strategies employed in the translations done during the third wave of...
Drawing from the mainly Bakhtinian theories of the grotesque and its further readings by Kristeva... more Drawing from the mainly Bakhtinian theories of the grotesque and its further readings by Kristeva, Foucault, and Bhabha, the present paper tends to examine the representation of “feminine grotesque” in one of the less discussed novels of Post-millennial Muslim diaspora, Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies (2015). Written in response to the Islamophobic aftermath of the 9/11 and London bombings, Aboulela’s postmillennial fiction is often read as an instance of Islamic Postcolonialism, in the shade of which the story’s manifestly corpographic quality is mainly neglected by the critics. An offspring of miscegenation between a Muslim African and a white non-Muslim Russian, Aboulela’s female protagonist Natasha Hussein reconfigures diasporic hybridity as seminally “monstrous,” and accordingly proposes a synthesis between the feminine abject and Muslim monstrosity. The Bakhtinian grotesque is exemplarily revitalized in Natasha’s abject body at different strata, which turns her body m...
This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history ... more This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history of mankind: 1) God’s creation of the world and the act of naming (appellation), 2) human being’s eating off the tree of knowledge and the expulsion from the garden of Eden, and 3) the building of the tower of Babel, its destruction by God, the dispersal of mankind and languages, and consequently the inevitability of translation. These stories are narrated in the light of the readings of two leading figures in the contemporary critical theory: Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Through recounting these three stories, I intend to narrate the ‘genesis’ of language and translation in three phases: Appellation: The first phase of language signifies God’s word. In this phase, God’s creation is synonymous with his Word: “In the beginning was the Word”. Human being’s act of naming other creatures becomes an imitation of God’s creation. At this stage, words (or better to say ‘names’) have no co...
In order to fix their articulations, the gendered discourses always try to legitimize their own s... more In order to fix their articulations, the gendered discourses always try to legitimize their own self dimensions and delegitimize the others’ elements; legitimation, from the semiotic-discursive point of view, is a process that hegemonizes power through discourse articulation. The authors’ aim in this paper is to investigate and identify the way in which the legitimating mechanisms of gendered discourses function in contemporary Persian story literature. Hence, they provide a deconstructive reading of the methodology of Van Leeuwen (2007) based on Laclau and Mouffe (2001) and Derrida (1983) and take advantage of a variety of linguistic tools. Then, in order to analyze the functions of these mechanisms, they go through the “Solok” and purposefully examine some of its parts. Finally, they respond to the research question about how the legitimizing mechanisms of gendered discourses operate and introduce four structures, i.e. simple, compound, complex, and chain, in those mechanisms. Mor...
Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd&# 039; hui, 2004
The Unnamable is the story of a search to define and name oneself. This article examines the role... more The Unnamable is the story of a search to define and name oneself. This article examines the role of language in this regard, elaborates the notion of 'beyond' and its possibility, and finally assesses the possibility of silence 'within' and 'beyond' language and being. I argue that silence is 'the promise' that the language of the novel constantly makes, yet is never able to fulfil. Silence (and death) paradoxically motivates language and becomes part of (inside) the language of the text while always pointing to the outside. In order to discuss the above 'signifying forces' of the novel, it seems inevitable to read the novel in the light of deconstruction.
Critical Language and Literary studies , 2021
Using paradoxical spatializations, Raymond Chandler challenges the conventional representation of... more Using paradoxical spatializations, Raymond Chandler challenges the conventional representation of the Southern California region. The coexistence of heterogeneous elements in Chandler’s novels depicts a particular kind of mid-twentieth-century noir genre. These literary spaces, under epistemological tensions, move toward heterotopic descriptions. Finally, this paper calls the literary other spaces produced by Chandler’s stories Noir Heterotopias, and concludes that Chandlerian descriptions seek to induce a sense of suspense in their spatializations.
Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age, edited by Bernard Wilson and Sharmani Patricia Gabriel, 2020
Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career with works for and about children. Despite the signif... more Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career with works for and about children. Despite the significance this early phase of his oeuvre possesses in Iranian cinema, little has been done to analyze the dynamics of ethics in these films. We argue there are two major conditions at the heart of ethics in Kiarostami’s children’s films: children are either engaged in moments of altruism which intend to fulfil their responsibility toward the “other”, or attempt to go beyond this “responsibility” by resisting the codes and laws of the “Other” to reach a sense of liberated individuality. This chapter offers a new definition of ethics in which Kiarostami does not suggest absolute ethical statements but engages the audience in ethical questions. It illustrates children’s roles in relation to adults, families, and educational systems, and claims children continue to discover ways to evade dominant discourses.
Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television, edited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick, 2019
Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been con... more Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been constructed and reconstructed significantly depending on the drastic socio-political changes of contemporary Iranian society in the past five decades. This cultural history is the story of tensions between modernity and tradition. I consider children and childhood as symbols of modernity, yet children seem to be the major victims of modernizing forces. In one decade, they are represented as little adults, while in another, they cry for understanding and tolerance. Iranian children’s cinema portrays young people as agents on a humanist quest for self-identity and freedom, and at the same time, depicted children remain as the voices of change, rebellion, and resilience.
TELL, 2007
This article is an attempt to address a major issue which is widely neglected in the area of peda... more This article is an attempt to address a major issue which is widely neglected in the area of pedagogical studies. Unfortunately, the mere focus of educational researches has been on the issue of teaching foreign languages. It is wrongly presumed that any person who is an expert on a subject – including literature – can be automatically considered as a teacher in that field. Here, the focus is on the major contemporary developments in teaching poetry and introducing several practical strategies as resource ideas for the teachers of English poetry. The importance and impact of reader-oriented theories on teaching methods is an instrumental factor and is the major concern of this article. Therefore, the article balances the theoretical issues in the field with practical advice – in the form of strategies inspired by reader-oriented theories – for the teachers of English poetry.
This essay provides, for the first time, a model for identifying and analyzing “free indirect dis... more This essay provides, for the first time, a model for identifying and analyzing “free indirect discourse” (FID) in narrative film, the most problematic mode of representing characters’ discourse which has received little attention from film theorists and critics. According to the established “dual-voice” hypothesis, FID is an ambiguous merger of the narrator’s voice and the character-focalizer’s, without one predominating over the other. The basic argument of the essay, then, is that FID occurs in a film at the moment when the spectator is not able to distinguish narratorial objectivity from characterological subjectivity. This characterizes the narrative text as polyvocal / polyphonic, leading to artistic ambiguity and such processes as “différance” and “deterritorialization.” Based on this theory, the researchers offer a detailed analysis of the textual markers and major functions of FID in filmic narratives. The model provided can be adopted for analyzing any narrative film.
این جستار شگرد روایی «گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد» را در رمان لب بر تیغ حسین سناپور (1389) بررسی میکند... more این جستار شگرد روایی «گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد» را در رمان لب بر تیغ حسین سناپور (1389) بررسی میکند. پس از بحثی دربارۀ ساختار روایت در این رمان، شیوه های چهارگانۀ بازنمود گفتمان شخصیت ها در روایت های داستانی با ذکر نمونه هایی معرفی می شوند. از آن میان، گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد اهمیتی ویژه دارد، زیرا یگانه سبک روایی است که موجب ابهام و تکثر معنای متن می شود. در بخش پایانی مقاله، با تحلیل دو قطعه از رمان لب بر تیغ نقش شگرد گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد در روایت این داستان توضیح داده می شود. بحث اصلی این مقاله آن است که کاربرد گفتمان غیرمستقیم آزاد موجب می شود که گفتمان راوی و گفتمان شخصیت کانونی ساز به طور همزمان در متن حضور داشته باشند، به گونه ای که نتوان یکی را بر دیگری غالب دانست. در نتیجه، گفتمان روایت میان عینیت و ذهنیت نوسان پیدا می کند و چندصدایی می شود، زیرا صدای راوی و صدای شخصیت ها مدام در حال گفت و گو با یکدیگرند.
Translation Studies
This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history ... more This article is a close reading of perhaps the most famous stories (‘narratives’) in the history of humanity: 1) God’s creation of the world and the act of naming (appellation), 2) human being’s eating off the tree of knowledge and the expulsion from the garden of Eden, and 3) the building of the tower of Babel, its destruction by God, the dispersal of humanity and languages, and consequently the inevitability of translation. I narrate these stories in the light of the readings of two leading figures in the contemporary critical theory: Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Through recounting these three stories, I intend to narrate the ‘genesis’ of language and translation in three phases: Appellation: The first phase of language signifies God’s word. In this phase, God’s creation is synonymous with his Word: “In the beginning was the Word”. Human being’s act of naming other creatures becomes an imitation of God’s creation. At this stage, words (or better to say ‘names’) have no co...