Cooke Discussion Questions

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?