MF Al-Shetawi

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Jordan

This article examines the revenge of nature in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). Characters exploit and abuse nature through nuclear weapons and bombs. Nature proves to be an active agent that takes its revenge on society. This article follows an eco-critical approach so as to examine this theme. Nature has a negative impact on society since it in...

Female refugees go through numerous stages and transformations during the asylum-seeking process, all of which leave their imprint on their individuality over time. This forced journey, the fleeing of a war-torn country, the search for shelter and safety in the host country, as well as a plethora of other factors, all have a bearing on the refugee'...

As a literary text, The Book of Collateral Damage (2019) by Arab American novelist Sinan Antoon effectively represents the psychological impact of the Iraq War in 2003. This article utilizes trauma theory to explore how the war narrative in Antoon’s novel probes the event of this war to represent the experiences that Iraqi individuals had from livi...

This paper approaches Philip Roth’s semi-autobiographical novel Operation Shylock (1993), an appropriation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, from a postcolonial angle attempting to find an answer to Spivak’s question: Can the Subaltern Speak? It focuses on how Philip Roth silences the Palestinian “Other” in his narrative telling the story of...

This article examines Stephen Soderbergh’s film Contagion (2011) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) as a critique of the uncivilized culture of our modern society, which depends on fragile connections and lack of solidarity. Although global pandemics annihilate the world and shatter families, this study demonstrates how they are depi...

This article sheds light on the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s interest in Egypt and the Arab world. It underscores the influence of his tour in Egypt during the opening of the Suez Canal on his works, drawing on the theoretical underpinnings established by Edward W. Said. The study foregrounds Ibsen’s correspondence, plays, and other works th...

For the last years, Shakespeare has been the subject of considerable critical and artistic scrutiny —a matter that situates his dramatic heritage far beyond its original Elizabethan context and places it within a spectrum of different historical and cultural contexts. This paper aims at examining Romeo and Juliet as a universal love story that is l...

This article attempts to document and examine the corpus of Arabic and Islamic allusions and references in Shakespeare’s drama and poetry in line with postcolonial discourse and theory. The works of Shakespeare incorporate a large body of Arabic/Islamic matters, which the Bard has gleaned from different sources, such as travel literature, narrative...

This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavours of Arab American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance, and theatre in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab American dramatists and theatre groups attempt to counter the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which have madl...

Diasporic Arab writers substantially differ in how they represent sociopolitical issues of contemporary Arab cultures in their literary works. Because the family is the core unit of Arab societies and cultures, this study explores fictional representations of one of the main relations within the Arab family. Specifically, this study examines how Ar...

The location of war is a multicultural arena where multiple traumatic discourses of dissimilar nationalities are converged and yoked together by the bond of a collective traumatic response; it significantly functions as a major generative character that directs the formulation of the traumatized identity of an individual, group, or community. The p...

Western characters are quite prominent in the works of Arab novelists in diaspora since the events of these novels are mainly set in European and American urban spaces. European and American characters have been rendered differently from one period to another and from one Arab writer to another. In this context, one may suggest that the portrayal o...

This paper examines how Arab British novelist Jamal Mahjoub appropriates and interpolates Shakespeare’s Othello. Specifically, this paper argues that Mahjoub’s historical novel The Carrier (1998) re-writes Shakespeare’s Othello in a way that enables the novelist to comment on some of the themes that remain unexplored in Shakespeare’s masterpiece. M...

Building on what has already been documented in related scholarship concerning this topic, this article will look into facets of postcolonial theory vis-à-vis appropriations and adaptations of the plays of Shakespeare in Arabic. In doing so, the article will compare known postcolonial 'Shakespeares', and Arabic appropriations of his plays. It will...

This paper intends to discuss the various treatments of Hamlet in Arabic culture. The study will reveal that Shakespeare's much discussed play has also become a subject of continual interest in Arabic writings. The play has been diversely interpreted and innovatively treated in Arabic belles‐lettres. The paper aims to highlight these areas in parti...