Friday, 25 April 2008

Temple University Center City Campus (TUCC) Room 420, 5:30-7:00pm

Directions to TUCC

Suzanne Gauch , Temple University

"Cultural Politics, Women’s Rights, and Recent Tunisian Film"

Respondent: Jessica Winegar, Temple University

Often highlighting women’s issues, internationally-distributed Tunisian films contribute integrally to Tunisia’s cultural politics both at home and abroad. This talk explores the transnational discourses that enable many recent Tunisian films to promote the post-independence Tunisian government’s exemplary women’s rights record while simultaneously offering a critique of Tunisian society. It further focuses on two recent films, VHS Kahloucha and Bedwin Hacker, that begin to move beyond entrenched cultural politics to broader criticisms of social, political, and economic policies while simultaneously addressing the lingering Orientalisms that make these same cultural politics possible—and necessary—in the international arena.

Poster for VHS Kahloucha (Néjib Belkadhi, 2006)

Suzanne Gauch is assistant professor of English at Temple University, where she teaches postcolonial and gender studies. She has recently authored Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) as well as a number of articles on African and Caribbean postcolonial literature, film, and theory.

Jessica Winegar is assistant professor of Anthropology at Temple University, where she focuses on visual and material culture, the culture industries, nationalism, neoliberalism, social class, gender, value, and the Middle East. Professor Winegar has authored Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford, 2006) and a number of articles. 

Still from Bedwin Hacker (Nadia El Fani, 2003)