Final Report Summary - QAF (Queer-Arab-French: Sexuality, Islam and Citizenship in France) During my twelve months as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, I pursued my new monograph project, Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Trans/filiations (please note the title change, which differs from the original proposal and that emerged during the project). In twelve months, I completed four of the five chapters. I’m now drafting the final chapter and the introduction as well as preparing the book proposal to be submitted in due course to a major university press. In Queer Maghrebi French, I explore the process by which Maghrebi and Maghrebi-French men have begun to construct alternative same-sex identities with the re-appropriation of pre-national North African same-sex traditions. In addition, by combining modern constructs of gay sexuality and North African feminism, with the repressed traditions of Maghrebi same-sex love, these intrepid pioneers have begun to forge a ‘hybrid’ sexual identity, which they present with growing confidence to France’s gay culture, to their Maghrebi and Maghrebi-French communities, and to the world at large. This project consists of an ethnographic study of same-sex sexualities and identities, which I pursued through interviews of some 50 Maghrebi and Maghrebi-French homosexual males in major urban centres in France (Paris, Lille, Caen, Lyon, and Marseille). In sum, this monograph demonstrates how speakers negotiate a sense of ‘intimate’ and of ‘sexual citizenship’. But this does not imply a radical break from the traditional Maghrebi family system. Maghrebi and Maghrebi-French men may explain their sexuality in terms of a modern ‘coming out’ narrative, documented in the recent scholarship on French homosexuality. Nevertheless, North African sexual minorities are able to negotiate cultural hybridity, interculturality, and ‘belonging’ in a ‘third space’ that combines elements from traditional and modern discourses such as family, honour, face-saving, the symbolic order of gender differences, as well as the western constructs of individualism and sexual autonomy. They also address broader public policy debates on Islam, Islamaphobia, and homophobia in France. During the Marie Curie Fellowship, I also benefited from the intellectual exchange with colleagues at Nottingham Trent University who helped me sharpen my focus and to refine my understanding of the specific ways in which cultural discourses and social practices in France inform sexual identity, citizenship and Maghrebi identities. At the same time, I shared my expertise with NTU staff and students by attending and participating in on-campus events, including scholarly conferences, guess lectures, and the occasional faculty reading group where we met to discuss scholarship related to cultural difference, language issues, and human rights. I also developed and widened significantly my ties with colleagues both at NTU and further afield from many major universities in the U.K (see below the list of presentations, round table discussions, and external reviews). Throughout the year at NTU, I occasionally organized outreach activities that helped with the transfer of knowledge to colleagues, students, and local community members. This included the UK debut of a recent Moroccan/French film and an engaging question & answer session with its director, Mehdi Ben Attia, at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. I also invited a guest lecturer from the US in a related field so that colleagues and students at NTU could see how scholars from other contexts discuss and research these topics. Finally, two NTU colleagues (Dr. Martin O’Shaughnessy and Dr. Gill Allwood) serve as editors of Modern & Contemporary France, a key UK-based journal in the field of French studies, while I serve as co-editor-in-chief of Contemporary French Civilization, which is a key US-based journal in the field of French studies. The Editors from the respective journals worked together during the year to recruit authors and review manuscripts, and to discuss future directions of and collaborations between journals. The three editors (O’Shaughnessy, Allwood, and Provencher) also become the co-editors of a new book series, Studies in Modern & Contemporary France, which was commissioned by Liverpool University Press and launched during the Marie Curie Fellowship. The three editors will continue to work together and collaborate in this capacity for years to come.
