Literary interventions



▪ Academia: conferences, publishing, and curriculum development
“A forum that aims at bridging the gap of difference and connecting cultures, as well as reaching across the divide to the Other. The setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. It offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time marked by the hegemony of the post 9/11 discourses of horrorism.”
--Dr Khalid Amine, Conference Convener
Writing Tangier (2004), Voices of Tangier (2006), Performing / Picturing Tangier (2007)


▪ Play Translations: from the original Arabic by Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, Tanjawi writer
  • Shakespeare Lane, translated to English by Rajae Kaloufi (pictured below, left)
  • Lalla J'mila, translated to English by Mustapha Hilal Soussi (pictured below, center)
  • The Red Fire , translated to English by Mustapha Hilal Soussi (pictured below, center) Summer 2008 release








▪ Literary Criticism: by Mohamed Elkouche, Faculty of Oujda
  • "Eye for Eye?" A Reading in the Travel accounts of P. Bowles and A. Akbib

“Akbib is certainly one of the emerging post-colonial voices (that have) … started to ‘write back’ to the metropolitan Centre”, El Kouche argues; he concludes by asking, “…is it not better for all of us to dispense altogether with all discourses of Orientalism and Occidentalism so that we could create and establish a more rational and edifying inter-cultural dialogue?"

“Thus,” El Kouche argues,” given the strategic geographical location of Tangier, as the door or gateway of the West to North Africa and the Moslem world, it can be concluded that this city served Bowles rather as a symbolic Panopticon or look-out from which he was representing Morocco, North Africa and the Orient in general in a typically Orientalist fashion.”

El Kouche argues “that Bowles was greatly agonized by witnessing the transition of his beloved cities, Tangier and Fez, from colonial to post-colonial eras.”

“Some Tanjawi writers seem even to ‘write back’ to the West in a more or less conscious attempt to interrogate its misconceptions about the Moslems in general or to assert the dignity and the cultural identity of such an Oriental(ized) city as Tangier,” El Kouche oberves. Ben Bouchta, for example, “is always on the side of the victims and the oppressed” and his “masterpiece”, Lalla J’mila, concentrates “on the problem of women’s oppression by men and their painful quest for freedom and self-assertion.”

“In both novels, this city is … portrayed and ‘celebrated’ in such a way that it appears as a protagonist in its own right.” But, as El Kouche argues, Bowles’ and Majid’s treatment of Tanjawis' as “full-fledged protagonists” is in stark contrast: where the latter features them with “compelling voices, stories and histories” and in doing so, they “contest or subvert” hegemonic discourse."


▪ The City: Expo 2012 Bid Materials (topic for future research and postings)

▪ The Nation: City Tourist Promotion (topic for future research and postings)


This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.


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