Mahmoud, Felciano Publish Books on Postcolonial Bildungsromane in Egypt and Puerto Rico

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From left: professors Rania Mahmoud and Violeta Lorenzo Feliciano.

Rania Mahmoud, assistant professor of Arabic, and Violeta Lorenzo Feliciano, associate professor of Spanish, both in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, published their respective monographs this academic year. Lorenzo Feliciano's book came out in fall 2023, and Mahmoud's, earlier this spring. 

Female Voices in Egypt

More specifically, through close reading of two Egyptian and two British texts, Mahmoud examines the use of the bildungsroman (narrative of development) as a conduit for evaluating the modern Egyptian national project.

Mahmoud's book, Female Voices and Egyptian Independence: Marginalized Women in Egyptian and British Fiction (2024), is a comparative study of 20th and 21st century Egyptian and British fictional engagements with two of Egypt's modern revolutions: the 1881-82 Urabi Revolution and the 1919 Revolution.

First by reading novels against the grain, the study recovers female voices that are multiply marginalized, due to their gender and/or ethnicity, whether by colonial imperial powers, the nation, their immediate regional community or, finally, by the novels themselves.

Second, using a comparative lens, the study foregrounds the ways in which Egyptian and British authors confirm, critique, rewrite/revise or reject developmental narratives. The study demonstrates that marginalized women in the narratives are instrumental to the male protagonists' rejection/understanding/critique of the national project. 

Learn more about Mahmoud's book.

Puerto Rican Bestsellers

The book examines how these Bildungsromane do not merely imitate classic coming-of-age narratives but revise, adapt and often subvert the genre thematically and, in some cases, parodically.

Lorenzo Feliciano's book, A base de palos: modernidad, aprendizaje y formación en cinco Bildungsromane puertorriqueños, was published last fall with the academic press Ediciones Katatay (Argentina). Lorenzo Feliciano analyzes — from a historical and postcolonial perspective that focuses on discourses of racial, political and national identities — five award-winning Bildungsromane or best-sellers written by Puerto Rican authors who began publishing between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Her analysis contributes to the understanding of the relationship between literature and nation-building in colonial contexts.

Her study also points to how the implementation of American development theories in Puerto Rico by both local and foreign authorities have shaped the island's national discourses and political projects. The book was presented on March 14 at the IV Congreso Internacional "El Caribe en sus literaturas y culturas" in Córdoba, Argentina. 

Learn more about Lorenzo Feliciano's book.