Online presentation by Prof. Nevine El Nossery (UW-Madison)
Wednesday, February 23rd at 4-5:15 pm (CT)
Since the Arab Uprisings, a young generation of female artists has emerged. At the crossroads of gender, race, and class, Zainab Fasiki’s 2019 comic book Hshouma. Corps et sexualité au Maroc is a bold endeavor that breaks with the social heteronormative framework and conventional representations of gender, women’s sexuality and their bodies. In this presentation, I first look at how art has become more and more a receptacle of “artivism” (combining art and activism). Second, I examine the comic book’s provocative nature, both in its form and content, which challenges the genre’s conventions. Broadly speaking, I am interested in examining the aesthetic nature of this contentious comic book and how Fasiki negotiates these tensions.
Prof. El Nossery’s presentation (4-4:20 pm) is part of the Department of French and Italian Research Seminar (featuring Alessandro Martina’s “To Be Done with the Judgement of Southern Italy: Racism or Class Struggle at the Core of the Vexata Quaestio?” and Kristin Phillips-Court’s “Discordia concors: Irenic Inclinations in 15th- and 16th-c. Italian Literature and Art”).
Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian and the Middle East Studies Program at UW-Madison