Pomegranate Fiction: Cosmopolitanism and Contemporary Arab American Novels

The “transnational turn” in American literary studies has generated enormous literary analysis and debates on American literature’s encounter with and integration into transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Writers from various marginal ethnicities have had their voices heard; one of the emergent literary groups involved in this transnational turn is Arab American Literature. The present research argues that Arab American writings strive for change in mainstream cultural and social assumptions of ethnicities and minorities, promoting a more plural and cosmopolitan perspective, or what cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah calls “cosmopolitan contamination.” The study recognizes the unique socio-political status of this body of literature and aims to introduce a dynamic dialectic between cosmopolitanism and the selected Arab American novels. The study intends to analyze the works of Arab-American women writers such as Diana Abu-Jaber, Mohja Kahf, Alia Yunis and Hala Alyan; The chapters in this study closely investigate the concept of cosmopolitanism and how it is perceived and negotiated in terms of content and style in their selected novels: Arabian Jazz (1993), The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), The Night Counter (2009), and Salt Houses (2017). The study attempts to make a contribution to Arab American studies through analyzing the selected novels’ engagement with cosmopolitanism and delineate how they contribute to current understandings of cosmopolitanism in literature as well.

• Education

  since 10/2020	PhD Candidate, Graduate School Practices of Literature, Uni Münster
  2011 until 2014	Master of Arts: English Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
  2007 until 2011	Bachelor of Arts: English Literature, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

• Projects and Professional Experience

  Professional Experience

  2016 bis 2019

  ESL teacher at Safir Language Academy

• Publications and Conference Papers

  Publications

  2018	Lucia Berlin. “Phantom Pain.” Dastan Hamshahri. Trans. P. Arasteh. Tehran: Hamshahri. No.88, June 2018. 114.
  2016	Elizabeth Jolley. “A Hedge of Rosemary.” Dastan Hamshahri. Trans. P. Arasteh. Tehran: Hamshahri. No.69, September 2016. 114.
  2014	Parisa Arasteh, Hossein Pirnajmuddin. "The Mimic (Wo)man ‘Writes Back’: Anita Desai’s In Custody." International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences. 27 (2014). 57-66.

  Conference Papers

  2013	Representational Parallels of Postmodernism and Postcolonial Feminism in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Criticism & Metacriticism Conference. Imam Sadiq University. Tehran, Iran. [together with Hossein Pirnajmuddin]