Cooke Discussion Questions
Document Actions
Discussion questions for "Arab Women, Arab Wars"
1) What is the main premise of Miriam Cooke’s paper?
2) How, according to Cooke, does the novel, etc. emerging out of the
war experience challenge “the Homeric myth?” What implications
does it have for women writing war stories?
3) How have unconventional, post-colonial wars challenged “the mystic
boundaries” of war myth-making monopolized by men?
4) What is the significance of the statement, “These war stories,
although men’s domain, may also be interpreted as being about peace,
women’s domain” (p. 152). How have the post-1948 wars in the Arab
world, for example, the Algerian war of independence, granted
legitimacy to women authors entering a traditional “male
preserve”?
5) How did Palestinian women’s writings contribute to a further
expansion of this trend?
6) How do messy civil wars dissolve boundaries between “home” and
“front” so as to create, what Cooke calls, a “hyperspace”?
7) How do we see this manifested during the Lebanese civil war?
8) How are women “inscribing their experience in war into the war
story” and with what results?
