Hala ben Mbarek

 ( University of Tunis/ Tunisia)

Hala BEN  MBAREK is associate professor of modern Hebrew langage and literature in the Departement of Arabic studies at the University of Tunis. She is also general secretary of the Tunisian Society of  Comparative Literature.  Her research focuses on the Hebrew and Comparative Literature ; the contribution of popular genres to the construction of modern Jewish identities ; the intersecting fields of modern multilingual Arab-Hebrew literatures of North Africa and the Middle East. She currently directs an Mecam funded research project: Judeo-Arab cultural heritage in Tunisia: A damaged identity and threatened linguistic diversity. She leads a team of approx 5 MA students. Her publications include her first book العبرية للمبتدئين (FSHST Press, 2016) and many articles in academic journals.

Hala ben Mbarek

Project IRF V : Identities & Beliefs

Judeo-Arab cultural heritage in Tunisia: A damaged identity andthreatened linguistic diversity (1850-1950)

This project present works of Judeo-Arabic Tunisian literature that have been previously unstudied and unavailable in translation. It’s based on a qualitative study of a number of works divided by genre. It will present translations of  malzumat (satirical ballads), 22 qinot (laments), 39 ghnayat (songs), 10 hikayat and deeds of righteous men (fiction).

We will reveal: How social identity correlates with linguistic identity? How were the Tunisian Jewish authors of these works part of a permanent tension between identity and belief; between mobility and adaptation? What is the double link between their writing and their identity; between identity construction and intercultural and linguistic dialogue?

This Tunisian Judeo-Arab corpus is becoming more and more vulnerable because its elements are more than ever threatened by forgetting, political and social influences, emigration, and deterioration. To what extent are linguistic unification policies in Tunisia a frequent source of incomprehension between the majority group and the linguistic minority? How do they give ethnic minorities the feeling of loss of identity? How to preserve the Judeo-Tunisian cultural and linguistic heritage to contribute to the national cultural wealth?

 

English