Shiahrazad's Daughters

<p>The following project is the fruition of a number of long-standing interests developed both in undergraduate and graduate studies. While pursuing my undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, I focused primarily upon Literature and Women’s Studies. During the course of my studies for a Masters in Humanities at Dominican College in San Rafael, I continued to focus on the Middle East by writing term papers for many of my classes on Middle Eastern themes relating to the class as a whole. When the time came for me to choose a topic for my master’s thesis, I endeavored to create a project that could incorporate all of my areas of interest. It was no easy task to figure out a way to include not only Middle Eastern History and Women’s Studies, but also Art and Literature. With some pondering ' came up with the following project: a rewriting of a story from the <em>Thousand and One Nights</em> featuring a female hero which I would then illustrate and accompany with an historical introduction. I intended to create a book that would be ready for publication and suitable for audiences aged eight to twelve. As feminist fairy tales from around the world have recently been popularized, I hope to contribute to the genre with a Middle Eastern tale that could help dispel the myth of the shrouded helpless Middle Eastern woman. After reading through the many tales in the <em>Nights</em>, I found my perfect female hero in the very last story I read: <em>The Story of Jullanar of the Sea</em>. Re-writing the tale was a far more demanding task than I ever imagined, and illustrating it even more time-consuming, but the results are, for me, very rewarding. To complete the project that at first seemed so unwieldy has been a real gift, and one that I could not have accomplished without the help and support of Dr. Leslie Ross, Sr. Patricia Dougherty, and my mother, Amina Al-Jamal.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Humanities

Year

1999

Author dc:creator

• Al-Jamal, Huda

Contributors dc:contributor

• Leslie Ross, PhD
• Patricia Dougherty, OP, PhD

• Humanities
• Arts and Humanities

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.dominican.edu/humanities-print-theses/211

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.dominican.edu:humanities-print-theses-1210