MENA · Arab Women's Transnational Mediations: Travel Writing, Autobiography and Translation in Colonial Europe

During the late colonial period, Arab women made the journey to Europe for different reasons, including education, love and activism. These pioneering women left rich legacies and contributed to cultural, political and social life across national borders, telling stories that reflect their experiences and participating in forms of cultural mediation and exchange. The project will make visible the transformative role of Arab and Arab-African women writers and travellers and foreground their role as important actors in transnational processes of mediation shaped by colonial history, travel, and and collective memory. Focusing on travel experiences and autobiographical writings by Arab and European women in Arabic, English and German-language contexts, it will explore 1) the mediationpractices of women and how they contributed, through their travel, writing and translation activities, to transfers between Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 2) the cross-border travel and transmission of political ideas, feminist activism and practices and how this was shaped by transnational solidarities, 3) how these narratives represent cultural encounter with Europe and European colonization and produce gendered images and orientalist discourses, and 4) the impact of translation on these narratives and on the transmission and re-mediation of cultural memory and feminisms in different cultural and national contexts of reception. MENA will shed new light on travel writings by women and their interactions across linguistic and cultural boundaries, contributing to the decolonization of the transnational literary history of travel.