MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Rana Issa

Rana Issa is a Palestinian writer, translator and cultural producer whose work centers on literary and contemporary artistic practices intertwined with Arabic cultural history. In this seminar, she will discuss the role of essay writing in her practice, including excerpts from her forthcoming book Ummiyat, an autobiographical history that constructs feminist legacies of motherhood and language through modes of exposure, confession and exhibitionism. By working to display, uncover, and reveal sites of trauma, the text attempts to come to terms with how we speak about the unspeakable and why it matters.

Rana says of the forthcoming book:

‘Ummiyat is an autobiographical history that constructs feminist legacies of motherhood and language through modes of exposure, confession and exhibitionism. In my family, concealing trauma has been practised across the generations as a way to recuperate the dignity of family members in the wake of extremely traumatic political and personal events. By labouring to put on display, unconceal and reveal the sites of trauma, this text attempts to come to terms with how we speak about the unspeakable and why it matters.

Ummiyat is a neologism that captures how Arabic semantically entangles motherhood, slavery, illiteracy and nation into one trilateral lexical root. Through thinking between those concepts, my talk unfolds the story of my grandmother, Izdihar, a bitter woman if ever there was one. Izdihar has a name that signifies the flowering, blossoming, blooming and opening up towards prosperity and progress. Nothing could have been further from the life of this miserable woman. By committing to divulge her tale, I broach the silence of what has happened in my family, and come to learn about the source of Izdihar’s consuming misery. The text plays with exposure and concealment as nuances of colour that enliven a portrait, and produce a text that thinks about desire by continuously deflecting it on the shores of its character’s life.’

More info here.

Rana Issa is a writer, translator and cultural producer focusing on literary and contemporary artistic practices entangled with Arabic cultural history. She is the artistic director of Masahat: Spaces for Arab Culture in Exile. She works at the intersection between public humanities, activist engagements and academic curiosity. Rana’s work has appeared in leading journals, platforms and presses, and it encompasses theoretical, literary, translational and historical genres and modes of writing. Rana has collaborated with international artists from the region in the fields of film, performance arts, visual arts and sculpture. Her book The Modern Arabic Bible was published in 2023 by Edinburgh University Press. Issa is the co-founding board member of Masahat. She is Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut and Research Fellow at University of Oslo.

MA Forum is a seminar series on artistic research, hosted by HDK-Valand in collaboration with L’Internationale Online. Through invited guests, the series explores different dimensions of artistic research. The lectures are free and open to all.