Periodic Reporting for period 4 - PalREAD (Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present)
Période du rapport: 2022-10-01 au 2023-07-31
With massive numbers of the world’s population living as refugees and exiles, the literary production of displaced peoples poses serious questions for the writing of literary histories, challenging conventional and established methods of literary analysis, reading, and reception. This is the context in which PalREAD worked to develop a comprehensive model for the study of Palestinian literature as an early and on-going case of literary displacement. In doing so, PalREAD is sought new ways to think about literary history, periodisaiton, canonisation, and reception that challenge and lie outside the framework of the nation-state.
In tracing the story of Palestinian literary production across different countries and continents, PalREAD adpoted a transnational perspective combined with a holistic and material-led methodology that could view and understand Literature in its widest components. To tell the story of an exilic literature-of-a-nation, PalREAD developed and customised a multi-lingual relational database that bourght together and process fragmented data on texts, authors, publishers, critics, and scholars as well as explored crucial intersections with journalism, politics, and art. As datasets for the case of Palestinian literary production do not exist, PalREAD built its corpus from scratch, relying on undigitised archival sources. PalREAD’s data was visualised through a custom-built visualization tool that displays data in seven different data models. Furthermore, the project’s podcast series, publications, and digital interactive platform offer readers and users a variety of different entry points to learn and engage with the history of Palestinian literature in the 20th century.
In tracing the story of Palestinian literary production across different countries and continents, PalREAD adpoted a transnational perspective combined with a holistic and material-led methodology that could view and understand Literature in its widest components. To tell the story of an exilic literature-of-a-nation, PalREAD developed and customised a multi-lingual relational database that bourght together and process fragmented data on texts, authors, publishers, critics, and scholars as well as explored crucial intersections with journalism, politics, and art. As datasets for the case of Palestinian literary production do not exist, PalREAD built its corpus from scratch, relying on undigitised archival sources. PalREAD’s data was visualised through a custom-built visualization tool that displays data in seven different data models. Furthermore, the project’s podcast series, publications, and digital interactive platform offer readers and users a variety of different entry points to learn and engage with the history of Palestinian literature in the 20th century.
PalREAD has been successful in delivering the project’s major outputs. These include: (1) a customised multi-lingual database, (2) a custom-built visualisation tool, (3) an online platform/digital interactive monograph published by Stanford University Press, (4) a podcast series, (5) publications, and (6) project events, conferences, workshops, and dissemination activities.
For further information on the PalREAD project, visit the project page: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/index.html
A list of PalREAD's publications is available here: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Publications/index.html
The PalREAD Podcast "Balad min Kalam (Country of Words): Conversations on Palestinian Literature" can be accessed here, as well as on mainstream podcast channels (Spotify and Apple Podcasts): https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Podcast/index.html
A list of PalREAD project events can be found here: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Events/index.html
The project’s online platform, a digital interactive monograph published by Stanford University Press entitled "Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature" can be accessed through its dedicated site: https://countryofwords.org
For further information on the PalREAD project, visit the project page: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/index.html
A list of PalREAD's publications is available here: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Publications/index.html
The PalREAD Podcast "Balad min Kalam (Country of Words): Conversations on Palestinian Literature" can be accessed here, as well as on mainstream podcast channels (Spotify and Apple Podcasts): https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Podcast/index.html
A list of PalREAD project events can be found here: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/Events/index.html
The project’s online platform, a digital interactive monograph published by Stanford University Press entitled "Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature" can be accessed through its dedicated site: https://countryofwords.org
As there are no existing datasets on Palestinian literature, the absence of precedents and the extreme fragmentation of the data sources encouraged PalREAD to chart its own path. PalREAD’s novel methodological approach – a synthesis between digital methods together with textual, reception, trend, and network analysis – has not been applied to Modern Arabic Literature before, not to mention to a case of displaced production such as Palestinian literature.
The development of the customised database to house the project’s corpus of undigitised non-machine readable archival material allowed the project team to engage in novel ways of conducting analysis. Furthermore, the development of the visualization tool allowed the team endless opportunities to cross-check and refine the data, as well as widely share project findings in an interactive online visual format. Mixed methods of data entry and analysis are now possible and include datamining, data visualisation, quantitive and qualitative analysis, content analysis, network analysis, and trend analysis, all supported by the custom-built visualization tool developed specifically for the PalREAD project. In this way, the data sets compiled for PalREAD are a unique contribution to the field, providing the groundwork on which future scholars interested in the intersections between modern Arabic literature and Digital Humanities can build.
PalREAD tackled the history of Palestinian literature as an important case study for the exploration of transnational frameworks of analysis for inherently exilic literatures. A transnational understanding of Palestinian literary history contributes to the development of a more entangled perspective on modern Arabic Literature more specifically, and exilic literatures more broadly.
Through this lens, Palestinian literature allows the possibility to read together national and exilic literature, encouraging cross-disciplinarity, exloring new ways to write nonlinear and nonconventional literary histories of displacement and movement, exposing unexpected constellations, networks, trajectories, relationships, and collaborations; working across multiple literary geographies; and revealing just how multilayered literary histories can be. In this way PalREAD facilitated a timely engagement with histories of displaced literatures, fostering new perspectives and methodologies that can tackle the realities of literature and people in motion. It also forged new paths of inquiry by making available to readers and users the project’s innovations, tools, oral histories, research, and findings.
In light of the loss and destruction of Palestinian literary sources, oral history and interviews played an important role in filling the gaps in knowledge and facilitating a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian literary history. The PalREAD project produced and launched ten audio interviews in Arabic with key literary and cultural figures. The audio interviews, sixty minutes each, were professionally recorded, edited, and produced. The interviews are also available as part of a podcast series on mainstream podcast channels.
The development of the customised database to house the project’s corpus of undigitised non-machine readable archival material allowed the project team to engage in novel ways of conducting analysis. Furthermore, the development of the visualization tool allowed the team endless opportunities to cross-check and refine the data, as well as widely share project findings in an interactive online visual format. Mixed methods of data entry and analysis are now possible and include datamining, data visualisation, quantitive and qualitative analysis, content analysis, network analysis, and trend analysis, all supported by the custom-built visualization tool developed specifically for the PalREAD project. In this way, the data sets compiled for PalREAD are a unique contribution to the field, providing the groundwork on which future scholars interested in the intersections between modern Arabic literature and Digital Humanities can build.
PalREAD tackled the history of Palestinian literature as an important case study for the exploration of transnational frameworks of analysis for inherently exilic literatures. A transnational understanding of Palestinian literary history contributes to the development of a more entangled perspective on modern Arabic Literature more specifically, and exilic literatures more broadly.
Through this lens, Palestinian literature allows the possibility to read together national and exilic literature, encouraging cross-disciplinarity, exloring new ways to write nonlinear and nonconventional literary histories of displacement and movement, exposing unexpected constellations, networks, trajectories, relationships, and collaborations; working across multiple literary geographies; and revealing just how multilayered literary histories can be. In this way PalREAD facilitated a timely engagement with histories of displaced literatures, fostering new perspectives and methodologies that can tackle the realities of literature and people in motion. It also forged new paths of inquiry by making available to readers and users the project’s innovations, tools, oral histories, research, and findings.
In light of the loss and destruction of Palestinian literary sources, oral history and interviews played an important role in filling the gaps in knowledge and facilitating a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian literary history. The PalREAD project produced and launched ten audio interviews in Arabic with key literary and cultural figures. The audio interviews, sixty minutes each, were professionally recorded, edited, and produced. The interviews are also available as part of a podcast series on mainstream podcast channels.