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, Professor El Nossery first looks at how art has become more and more a receptacle of “artivism” (combining art and activism). Second, she examines the comic book’s provocative nature, both in its form and content, which challenges the genre’s conventions. Broadly speaking, she is 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
