Professor Shereen Abouelnaga (Cairo University) looks at how women writers create their sense of self through stories that are often broken, layered, and full of contradictions. She uses cross-stitching—both as a real craft and a metaphor—to show how women piece together identity, memory, and voice across different times and places. By exploring texts from women of various cultures, I suggest that this stitching becomes a quiet act of resistance, helping to shape a personal, though not always straightforward, sense of self. In this way, women’s writing is not just personal testimony, but also a political act that reclaims the power to tell stories from the margins.
Shereen Abouelnaga is professor of English and comparative literature at Cairo University. She has written widely in English and Arabic on cultural and literary topics, with a special focus on gender.
Free and open to the public. A vegetarian Middle Eastern lunch will be provided.
This event is both in-person at Ingraham 206 and online. The speaker will be joining us via Zoom.
Cosponsored by MENA Programming
