Angela Harris Sánchez University of Granada Researcher Angela Harris Sánchez holds a BA in Art history (Granada University), an MPhil in Art Therapy (Complutense University), the GEMMA double Erasmus Mundus Master and a double International PhD in Women's Studies, Discourses and Gender Practices (UGR) and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (University of Bologna). She has been a National Research Fellow (FPU) and is now UGR-Postdoc and lecturer in the Archaeology Department. Publications: Queering Power: Affective Relational Anarchies, F(r)ictions and Disidentifications beyond Identity, Universidad de Almería, (2024). “Artherapy, Queer Failure and Horizontal Learning Experience in Students’ Postmemory Family Narratives” in Feminist Literary and Filmic Cultures for Social Action . Gender Response-able Labs. London and New York: Routledge (2024)

Jasmina Lukić Central European University Principal Leader Jasmina Lukić is Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna, the Principal Leader for EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network project (101073012  EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project, 2022-26), and the CEU Coordinator for EM GEMMA MA Program in Women's Studies and Gender Studies. She has published two monographs, numerous articles, and book chapters in literary studies, women’s studies, and Slavic studies. Publications: Times of Mobility: Transnational Literature and Gender in Translation  (with Sibelan Forrester and Borbála Faragó, CEU Press 2019) “To Dubravka Ugrešić, with Love”, CEU Review of Books  (No 1/2023) “Reading Transnationally: Literary Transduction as a Feminist Tool”, in Swati Arora, Petra Bakos-Jarrett, Redi Koobak, Nina Lykke, and Kharnita Mohamed (eds.), Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place  (Routledge 2024).

Stories of Survival: South Asian Voices in Vienna What does it mean to translate one’s story, language, and labor across borders? In this episode of the EUTERPE podcast series, host Samriddhi Pandey speaks with three South Asian scholars based in Vienna whose work deals with migration, identity, and artistic practice. Moiz Rehan reflects on queer asylum and bureaucratic violence, Rameeza Rizvi explores the “gray zones” of consent and the politics of intimacy in Lahore, and Fattima Naufil Naseer discusses the fading craft traditions of Lahore’s carpet weavers. The conversation moves through stories of navigating European academic spaces and finding ways to keep one’s voice alive inside these institutions. The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Samriddhi Pandey . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Review of 'Rosso come una sposa' by Anilda Ibrahimi Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. by Alice Flinta 4 April 2025 Review: Ibrahimi, Anilda. Rosso come una sposa. (Torino: Einaudi, 2008) What do we make of the memories and stories we gather throughout generations, passed down so many times that not only truth becomes undiscernible from the inevitable pepping up, but that the distinction itself loses importance? Well, a good pen weaves stories and opens portals onto lives that aren’t our own; a compelling pen crafts narratives that trap their readers in the weaving, and the lives that aren’t theirs, magically, could be so. Rosso come una sposa , meaning “Red as a Bride” or, I may suggest, “Bride Red”, is Albanian-born writer Anilda Ibrahimi’s debut novel. Originally published in Italian in 2008, the book is available in French (La mariée était en rouge , translated by Maïra Muchnik, 2013) and German (Rot wie eine Braut , translated by Franziska Kristen, 2011). It tells the story of an Albanian family through the lives of four generations of women, as narrated by the youngest, Dora, who is the amplifier for the polyphony of voices that came before her. The novel, chronologically set, is divided into two sections, and further into brief chapters: in the first part, narrated in the third person, we meet the older representatives of the family, Dora’s great-grandmother Meliha and grandmother Seba; while the second part is narrated in the first person and revolves around Klementina, the narrator’s mother, and Dora herself. The title refers to the novel’s opening sequence where a fourteen-year-old Seba is being helped dismounting a horse, wearing a red wedding dress, “come il sangue. Come un sacrificio umano dato in dono agli dèi per propiziare la pioggia. Come una sposa” [like blood. Like a human sacrifice to the gods for some rain. Like a bride].[1]In striking opposition, the second part opens with a much different wedding image: “il giorno del suo matrimonio mia madre indossava un tailleur beige dal taglio semplice e nei capelli non portava nessun velo” [the day of her wedding, my mother was wearing a simple-cut, beige suit, and no veil was covering her head].[2]It is through these parallelisms and a certain circularity in the book’s structure that the story is kept together and turned into a seamless fireside tale. Ibrahimi’s narrative weaving is itself a reflection of the weaving of lives the women of Kaltra, a village among the Albanian mountains, enact. Older women are here the weavers of destinies, entrusted with the task of marriage arrangement, that is the orchestration of the continuation of the family lineage, as well as with establishing and repairing, where necessary, fruitful relationships among the village’s families. This is seen as a true “potere che si acquisiva diventando suocere” [power one would acquire through becoming a mother-in-law] and therefore “spesso le donne passavano la vita aspettando con gioia di invecchiare” [women would often spend their lives excitedly waiting to get older].[3]This role would also give them authority over their daughters in law, and their journeys through motherhood. In the novel, women are presented first and foremost as mothers, a role that gives meaning to both their lives and their marriage: “Che felicità trova una donna dal marito se non i figli?” [What happiness can women get from their husbands, if not their children?]. Motherhood becomes not just a social imperative, but a defining characteristic of womanhood, in that “una donna senza prole è come un tronco senza rami” [a woman without children is like a tree without branches].[4]As mothers, women weave their children’s destinies not only by arranging their marriages, but also because tradition and popular belief sees them as bearers of their daughters’ moral rightfulness, passed down through generations: in fact, women’s actions and any morally reproachable act is believed to curse the daughters to come. For instance, when one of Seba’s sisters gets wrongfully accused of kurveria [adultery], the family gets concerned not only about their reputation, but also about the marriage possibilities of the daughters to come as kurveria , like a genetic predisposition, will run through their veins too. Gender has then an important, even deterministic, role since birth. As it is to be expected, the birth of a boy is collectively celebrated, whilst that of a girl is close to be seen as a tragedy: just like in Vergine giurata [Sworn Virgin , trans. Clarissa Botsford], a 2007 novel written in Italian by Swiss-Albanian author Elvira Dones, Ibrahimi reminds us of the tradition, upheld by Albanian villagers, of shooting in the air when a boy is born and of the almost mournful silence that follows the birth of a girl. The birth of a girl, in fact, stands not only for the continuation of the mother’s lineage, but also for all the sins and dooms that her body carries. Up until Dora’s times (1980s-1990s) it is believed that girls take their traits from their mothers, therefore the mothers and their bodies are solely responsible for the passing on of morals and vices. Women’s social role, however, is not exclusively to safeguard future generations, but also to ensure a continuation between the dead and the living: Meliha first and Saba after spend long afternoons in either cemeteries or burial places mourning, chanting, telling their ancestors about how life is unravelling, thus weaving life with the afterlife. Dora herself is brought into this ritual, as she will take over from her grandmother and continue her work. Similarly, on the metanarrative level, Dora’s enterprise of recounting the family narratives is an act of weaving of the oral histories that have been passed down onto her. Women’s bodies thus become bridges, through their voices, their chants, their mourning, and their writing. The undisputable protagonism of women should not, however, trick us into thinking that a society run by matriarchs would necessarily foster safe and enriching relationships among the women involved – rather the contrary, as Dora remarks: “le donne possono essere di grande aiuto nella scoperta del mondo dei grandi, ma possono anche rovinarti. Chi ha vissuto in grandi tribù di donne sicuramente sa di cosa parlo” [women can be of great help when it comes to exploring the world of the grownups, but they can also ruin you. Those of you who have been brought up in large women’s tribes will understand what I am talking about].[5]We are drawn into a narrative where even if the order may seem of matriarchal nature at first, it is soaked in patriarchal values. Ibrahimi shows us that patriarchy survives because it is all encompassing and all-invasive, to the point of absorbing women into self-annihilating hierarchical orders. These women cast their own needs and wills aside, conforming instead to a set of expectations and roles to ensure the continuation of the family, the tribe, the village, or the state. Allowed to leave their parental house only to join their husbands’, women are expected to comply to established roles and are strictly monitored. Entering the husband’s house also means being entrusted to the care of the mother in law, who not only arranges and orchestrates marriages, but also takes it to heart to ensure that the dignity and honour of the family are preserved: they intervene in their sons’ marital life, give them advice on how to gain and maintain respect and submission from their wives, and also keep an eye on whether the marriage is fruitful, and therefore the lineage continues. Yet, even if the setting of the novel is deeply patriarchal, in this novel men take the backseat, often portrayed as inept, incompetent, drunkards and violent with little possibility for redeption, but also lonely and emotionally stunted creatures, who represent the flipside of patriarchy. These are unstable, emotionally immature men, unable to fully express themselves in a social setting that requires them to comply to harsh standards of virility. Overall, they appear as peripheral, suggesting they had equally peripheral roles in the running of their very family and the public life of the village. Within this context, they are (too) often forgiven for their behaviours, for which women are made responsible: “si sa che gli uomini ci provano tutti, è dovere delle donne dire di no” [it’s renown that all men hit on women, so it is a woman’s duty to say no].[6]Within this women-run patriarchal order, the women must be tamed young so they do the taming of other women later on in their life. Along with the personal narratives, family- and village-centred, readers witness the development of yet another character that becomes more and more prominent – one might even say “invasive” – as we read on: Albania. The book opens in the immediate pre-World War II, with occasional flashbacks to the 1920s, and closes in post-communist and post-socialist times, when the country is just about to open up to the liberal freedom America was marketing as the staple of the “modern West” in 1992. The village of Kaltra is not spared the repercussions of national and international events – from soldiers’ recruitment and the arrival of the Germans during the war, to the process of urbanisation that sees villagers like Dora’s father moving to bigger cities like Valona or Tirana and setting up their families there, to the opening up of borders to both immigration and emigration. Following the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha (1946-1985), Albania sees, in fact, the coming of a global outlook, with the import of denim jeans, the arrival of migrant workers and an exodus towards other lands. Albania’s presence is ever so invasive during those sections of the novel that take place during communist times when, for the motherland’s sake, its citizens were allotted to different roles, often interfering with, and clashing against, their true ambitions and desires. Notable is the example of the narrator’s aunt Adelina, who is prevented from studying because the Party already agreed to her siblings going to university, and a family cannot serve the country when all its members “are sitting on their arses.”[7]Ibrahimi thus reproposes a larger-scale power dynamic evoking the first part of the novel where, within the small reality of the village, women were subjected to calculated marriage arrangements and roles to ensure the wellbeing of the families involved and the village at large. Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. It is a story full of poetic glimpses and love, often contradictory and violent – such as when Seba gets punished by her mother Meliha, who after forgetting her outside hanging upside down from the branch of a tress in the cold, spends the night cuddling her daughter, cursing herself for being a terrible mother, and Seba wishes she could get punished more often, if it means it would be followed by such unequivocal outbursts of affection. These voices are also languages that we see failing from generation to generation, that produce mistranslations of love, and that make up for an extraordinary choral narrative, a work of true craft[wo]manship. [1] Anilda Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa (Torino: Einaudi, 2008), p.5, my translation. [2] Ibid., p.123. [3] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.42. [4] Ibid., p.58. [5] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.188. [6] Ibid., p.127. [7] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.169.

Noemi Anna Kovacs Central European University European Cooperation Officer Noemi joined Central European University in 2009. Her professional career started when she graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University and completed her MA degree in Humanities and Liberal Arts with two specialisations, one in Romanic Studies/Italian Language, History and Literature and another in English and American Studies/English Language, History and Literature. During university, she worked as a language teacher and freelance translator. Later on, as a fresh graduate, a book publishing house hired her as the in-house editor. Before joining CEU, Noemi had been working on large EU- and state-funded research projects for an independent, interdisciplinary research institute, Collegium Budapest – Institute for Advanced Studies. At CEU, Noemi’s portfolio ranges from individual postdoctoral fellowships to large multi-beneficiary EU-funded research and educational projects. Her responsibilities include pre- and post-award management of such grants and projects, be it legal or financial matters or the development of dissemination, communication, and cooperation strategies.

Kimberly Campanello: "I don't want to be the poet who never thought about the meanwhile" On overlapping chronologies, intersecting geographies, translation and how writing can bring this all together. Kimberly Campanello - poet, performer, writer and professor at the University of Leeds - converses with Alice Flinta about her transnational belongings between the US, the UK and the south of Italy, and how this all comes together in her most recent project, a rewriting of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. For more info on Kimberly Campanello’s events and publications, see her official website https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/ An Interesting Detail (poetry collection): https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/an-interesting-detail Use the Words You Have (novel): https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/use-the-words-you-have-debut-novel Cover photo: Olivia Braggs. The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE Podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: Alice Flinta Thank you to Alexander Walker and Lilu for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s 'Persepolis' While reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, three major questions emerge. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? by Ninutsa Nadirashvili 23 July 2025 Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Between the years of 2000 and 2003, Marjane Satrapi published a quartet of autobiographical comics about growing up in Iran, experiencing the 1979 revolution and dealing with its aftermath. Once translated into English and combined into a two-volume work, it became Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Centuries earlier, in 431 B.C., Euripides – tragedian of classical Athens – produced a trilogy of plays.[1] Medea – the only surviving work – is often summarized simply as the story of a woman who murdered her two children to make her husband suffer.[2] Yet, like all women, Medea had a complex history of her own before, during and after her marriage to Jason, a prominent hero in Greek mythology. In some ways, just like Marjane’s protagonist, Medea presents a fascinating case study of how conquest, war, and migration can affect an individual; how they can erase our comfortable notions of home, belonging and safety. In Euripides’ text, Medea laments: Let it go! What profit in staying alive? No country, no home, no way to turn from evil. I made a mistake when I abandoned my homeland, trusting in the words of a Greek man. Now he will pay me justice, gods willing.[3] My personal interest in Medea is because I was born in Georgia. In the accounts of her myth, Medea lives in Kolkheti[4] – a very real polity, active between the 13th and 1st centuries B.C., that is considered as the first Georgian kingdom.[5] After being put under a love spell by the gods, Medea assists Jason in getting the Golden Fleece, betraying her family and kingdom in the process, and sails away with him, eventually settling in Corinth. There, after ten years of marriage, Jason decides to abandon his wife and marry the local king’s daughter. Though retellings differ, Euripides has Medea murder her two children as revenge against her disloyal husband.[6] After this, she flees Corinth and, according to Herodotus, ends up in the Iranian plateau among the Aryans who, in her honour, eventually change their name to Medes.[7] So, in one version of history, a Georgian princess, tricked, taken and then abandoned, spends the last years of her life on the same land that will later give birth to Marjane Satrapi, who, in turn, gives life to Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Persepolis , like Euripides’ play, is the story of one woman. Marjane is only ten when revolutionaries sweep through Iran, collectively devolving into an oppressive regime upheld by religious fanaticism. This eventually leads to a war between Iran and Iraq, forcing Marjane’s parents to send their daughter away. Marjane spends nearly a decade in Austria, lost and aimless, eventually ending up on the street. Unable to go on, she returns to Iran only to become severely depressed, even attempting suicide. Here, she echoes Medea again, writing, “I was a Westerner in Iran. An Iranian in the West. I had no identity.”[8] In other words, “No country, no home, no way to turn from evil.”[9] Migration – especially one that is forced – forever alters the migrant’s position from an “insider” to someone in the in-between. This is so painful that both women are driven to extremes. Understanding her survival from the suicide attempt as a miracle, Marjane obtains a degree in graphic design, marries, divorces, and finally decides to leave for Europe again – understanding that, in her mother’s words, “You are a free woman. The Iran of today is not for you.”[10] While reading Satrapi’s work, three major questions emerged for me. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? The answers, simply put, are: everyone, no, and yes. Still, I would like to delve deeper into Marjane’s story and explore these questions while keeping the author, myself, and Medea in mind. In 1980, Marjane’s father hoped that after centuries of “tyranny and submission”, the revolution was finally waking Iranians up.[11] Since Persepolis is a graphic novel, this statement is followed with a visual depiction of Iranian history: first, subjugated by their own emperors, then the Arabs, followed by Mongolians and finally, the modern imperialists of the global West. Here, the first set of questions come to mind – Who can colonise, who can be colonised and who benefits from the claim that this must be an unchanging dynamic? For example, while Satrapi’s Iran is presented as a colonised territory, the nation where I was born considers Iran a coloniser. In the 4thand 5th centuries, Persians controlled the Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, only to be replaced by Arabian tribes.[12] Ten centuries later, Persians re-conquered Georgia, ruling over the country until 1800s, only ceding power to the Russian Empire which continues to oppress Georgians and currently occupies approximately 20% of our territory.[13] Persepolis is a novel that understands the possibility within all nations to become the “evil” that Medea has no way to turn from. This is why Satrapi begins to tell the country’s 2,500-year story by pointing out that the people were subjugated by their own emperors – the same ones who demanded expansion to foreign lands. This is also why, when Marjane is in Austria, she comes to the realisation that “In every religion, you find the same extremists.”[14] This is why, to Marjane’s old Iranian schoolmates, “making themselves up and wanting to follow Western ways was an act of resistance.”[15] Satrapi, by allowing for her personal story to be the focal point of the novel, manages to get this point across. Everyone can be an oppressor, and anyone can be oppressed. The only group that benefits from the establishment of rigid rules around colonisation is the one that decides to become a conqueror next as it makes it easy to claim innocence that way: “Us? No, never! We’ve been the victims before; how could we?” Empires obliterate others and themselves, there are no set guidelines for who can be the “bad guy.” After all, Jason is supposed to be a hero; and yet he fails at it spectacularly. Once Persepolis proposes that anyone can turn into a tyrant, the novel shifts its focus to the consequences of tyranny – mainly war. In a chapter titled “The Water Cell”, Marjane is told a story that is eerily like one I have heard from my own mother. The reader finds out that Marjane’s grandfather was the son of Iran’s last emperor, subject to frequent threats, and jailed on several occasions.[16]In one of the illustrations, we see a young girl (Marjane’s mother) opening the door to police officers looking for her dad. This is how my mother’s story starts as well, though she rarely tells it. After she opens the door, her father – my grandfather – is taken away by police. His crime was nothing more than having the same last name as a high-ranking politician who opposed the government. This type of intimidation can only foster political unrest, eventually culminating in a war. Marjane and I were both 10 when war took us by surprise, as it always does.[17] In her novel, Satrapi highlights the direct nature of violence, especially when it reaches proportions of such magnitude. The writer tells us about a classmate who writes a eulogy to her father, the refugees who flood Tehran from the South, the maid whose son is given a golden key and told to die for his country in exchange for paradise.[18]When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, our nanny came to my mother in panic because her son had just been drafted. I remember vividly that she worried about him leaving before dinner, how they had taken him in a hurry, and she had only found time to put a bar of chocolate in his pocket. Satrapi’s focus on the fates of individual citizens answers the second question – No, war is never anything but personal. So then, once Medea has betrayed her father, started a war in several cities, and killed her own children, can she return to Kolkheti? After all, Persepolis is in ruins, and I have not been truly fluent in Georgian since the age of thirteen. We will never know how much of Euripides’ play is based on facts, but I would argue that the act of returning is entirely mythological. In Austria, Marjane denies her heritage, refuses to watch the news about Iran, and tries desperately to fit in.[19] Instead, she is repeatedly discriminated against, tokenised, isolated, and ultimately ends up on the street with no one to care for her. Soon after, unable to assimilate because much like returning, assimilation is a myth, she flies to Iran. She writes, “After four years living in Vienna, here I am back in Tehran. From the moment I arrived at Mehrabad Airport and caught sight of the first customs agent, I immediately felt the oppressive air of my country.”[20] Welcome home, indeed. In chapters to follow, Marjane compares her city to a cemetery, is labelled a whore for having sexual experiences in Austria, discovers the duality of revolutionary men who preach about freedom while refusing to let their wives speak.[21] If Herodotus is telling the truth, Medea only goes home as a conqueror. Meanwhile, Marjane is barely recognisable to her own parents. As for me, after living in Georgia for a year during my twenties, I know I will spend the rest of my life trying to find the same feeling of “home” that I had at thirteen, only to fail. (Though it was not always good, I once belonged to that place, and it belonged to me). There is no rest for the migrants. And belongings get left behind. Then again, as Satrapi points out on the final page of the novel, freedom has a price.[22] Bibliography Euripides. Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation . Translated by Diane Rayor. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Herodotus. Herodotus . Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . London: Vintage, 2008. Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia . London: Reaktion Books, 2019. [1] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , trans. Diane Rayor (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xiv. [2] Ibid., xiii. [3] Ibid., 37. [4] Or Colchis. [5] Ibid., 69. [6] Ibid., xiii. [7] Herodotus, Herodotus , trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 7.61. [8] Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return (London: Vintage, 2008)., 118. [9] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , 37. [10] Ibid., 343. [11] Ibid., 11. [12] Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2019). [13] Ibid. [14] Satrapi, 180. [15] Satrapi, 261. [16] Ibid., 18-25. [17] Ibid., 81. [18] Ibid., 86 – 99. [19] Ibid., 157-246. [20] Ibid., 248. [21] Ibid., 248 -339. [22] Ibid., 343.

Review of 'Sexe et mensonges' by Leïla Slimani Slimani’s interlocutors navigate their secret, but rich sexual lives, being constantly at risk of losing their social position and freedom. Their testimonies are often deeply saddening, but also witty and humorous. Most of them stress the society’s hypocrisy over sexuality, pointing out that the system promotes the exploitation and commercialization of the female body, while pretending to support “virtue”. Slimani leads the reader through these stories bringing different voices into a conversation by providing examples from Moroccan public life, scholarly articles, and her personal experiences. by Tamara Cvetković 17 March 2025 Review: Slimani, Leïla. Sexe et mensonges. Leïla Slimani’s first non-fiction book Sexe et mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle au Maroc (Sex and Lies: Sexual life in Morocco) is a collection of essays based on the interviews the author conducted with Moroccan women of different ages and classes, as well as on the analysis of social and political events, laws, art works, and media reports on (repressed) sexuality in contemporary Moroccan society. Sexe et mensonges was first published in 2017 in French,[1] translated into Arabic in 2019, and into English in 2020 as Sex and lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World . The book is divided into eighteen chapters/essays, the core of which are interviews with women who wanted to remain anonymous, but also with public figures such as feminist writer and journalist Fedwa Misk, Islamic feminist Asma Lambert, and with men such as Nabil Ayouch, a filmmaker who made a documentary on prostitution, and Mustapha, a policeman with 25 years of experience in law enforcement. Through personal stories, the book offers a detailed overview of the harsh consequences of the state ban on extramarital sexual relations, including homosexual practices. In addition, it showcases Moroccan society’s public morality that allows everything if it is kept secret, nurturing the “culture of silence” concerning sexuality, female pleasure, abortion, STDs, sexual violence, and harassment. According to the testimonies, among the harshest consequences of the morality legislation are prison sentences for the most vulnerable citizens (the poor, women, LGBT persons) who were caught having extramarital sexual relations; unsafe illegal abortions; unreported cases of rape, which occasionally force the victims to marry their rapists; public humiliation and exclusion; denial of the basic rights and citizenship to children born out of marriage, which ultimately leads to the most extreme consequences such as infanticide or suicide. Among these circumstances, Slimani’s interlocutors navigate their secret, but rich sexual lives, being constantly at risk of losing their social position and freedom. Their testimonies are often deeply saddening, but also witty and humorous. Most of them stress society’s hypocrisy, pointing out that the system promotes the exploitation and commercialization of the female body while pretending to support “virtue”.[2] Slimani leads the reader through these stories bringing different voices into conversation by providing examples from Moroccan public life, scholarly articles, and her personal experiences. From the beginning of the book, the author’s position is clear. Slimani self-identifies as a middle-class person from a liberal background. This self-identification is important, as the author sees it as the source of her values and privilege within Moroccan society. Namely, Slimani argues that her background allowed her not only to nurture self-respect, bodily autonomy, and a belief that hatred, violence, and misogyny cannot be justified by any religion, but also to remain safe.[3] From that position, she draws attention to the class dimension of sexual repression, arguing that the poorest are the mostly affected by the morality law,[4] as law enforcement is selective and arbitrary, and targets the most vulnerable citizens. Importantly, she further argues that people who are not as privileged as her in terms of education, class, and family background, nor raised according to “liberal values”, can be just as well aware of their rights: But I have to say that in Morocco I have met hundreds of people who have not had all this and who, nonetheless, believe that we should live and let live, that every human being has a right to dignity and to safety. [5] By pointing out the class dimension, Slimani argues that the right to dignity and safety is not an exclusive feature of middle-class morality or Western cultures, but also a right aligned with the core principles of Moroccan culture.[6]I find this claim important for understanding the different sides of public debate in Moroccan society. Namely, Slimani emphasizes the role that the binary opposition between West/modernity/“universal Enlightenment values” and “traditional” Islamic societies plays in debates about sex in Morocco. Talking from within this binary, Slimani seems to anticipate critique from both sides of the spectrum, claiming that privileged French liberal scholars will accuse her of Orientalism, reinforcement of stereotypes about Arab societies and Islamophobia, while Moroccan conservatives will accuse her of promoting “westernized decadence and liberalism of its elites.”[7] She argues that people suffering in prisons are not her Orientalist fantasies but reality, and calls for the ending of this opposition:[8] We need to stop pitting Islam and universal Enlightenment values against each other, stop opposing Islam and equality of the sexes, Islam and sensual pleasure.[9] While her call for dismantling this binary opposition is an important step in further building her arguments, Slimani does not problematize the values of the “liberal West”, nor middle-class morality, which sometimes leads to contradictory statements. For example, recalling the public outrage that accompanied the concert by Jennifer Lopez in 2015, who was criticized for sexually “provocative” dancing and outfit, Slimani remembers being “shocked” by the fact that Moroccan middle-class liberals called Jennifer Lopez a “whore.”[10] She further expresses similar, but affirmative shock when her housekeeper, whom she considered a conservative woman, expressed “progressive” attitudes by stating that the silence about sexuality is oppressive towards women, but also bad for Islam.[11] Unfortunately, Slimani remains “shocked”, instead of questioning the foundations of liberal middle-class morality, which has a lot in common with the “culture of silence” she argues against. In addition to that, while her conversations with the interlocutors stress the need for emancipation, and the importance of the education of youth, especially boys, about sexual rights, and women’s rights for overcoming the challenges within Moroccan society, Slimani does not extend her critical approach to the contradictions of European societies. For example, she often makes comparisons with Europe, particularly France as a place where the challenges that Moroccan women and girls are facing are non-existent and/or hardly imaginable, without mentioning the challenges that Muslim girls and women face in France, and without addressing the oppression of women in Europe.[12] I argue that an explicit critique of middle-class morality and complexities within Europe would allow the author to build a stronger argument against the binary opposition of Western modernity/Islamic traditionalism. Together with that, the book offers a valuable analysis of the debate on sexuality and women’s rights within Moroccan society. Slimani argues that Moroccan authorities are also ambiguous regarding the opposition of (Western) modernity vs. (Islamic) traditionalism, as testified by the psychiatrist Jalil Bennani, who participated in a series of public debates organized by Moroccan state authorities on abortion in 2015. Bennani claimed that politically liberal “modernists” were more hesitant to advocate for legal access to abortion, while “hard-line Islamists” were more open for discussion and negotiation,[13] revealing that these debates are more nuanced and complex than expected. In addition, even though in most of the chapters Slimani takes the Enlightenment and Western liberal values as universal and non-problematic, she also provides valuable insights for critiquing these values and dismantling the binary division Western modernity/Islamic traditionalism. In the chapter “All the religions are the same when it comes to sex” Slimani analyzes the works of scholars of Islamic culture to reveal that there is a centuries-long tradition of thematizing eroticism and sensuality in Islamic literature. According to this analysis, in Islamic literature faith was not confronted with desire, but rather intertwined with it, and sexual pleasure was seen as divine, while orgasm was compared with the “delights in paradise.”[14] She argues that the arrival of “puritanical” views on sexuality coincides with the decline of political and economic power in Arab countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and with the region’s subsequent colonization by Europeans. According to her the imposition of puritan views primarily served as a means of prevention of sexual relations between settlers and native women.[15] Slimani points out that the Moroccan morality law that bans homosexuality originates from the French penal code that was repealed in 1982. Further, Slimani provides important information about rich Islamic traditions that are neither conservative nor sexually repressive. She introduces the views of Avbdelwahab Bouhdiba, a scholar of sexuality, who argues that sexual freedom cannot be a copied Western model, but rather achieved through faith, relying on Islamic traditions.[16] Slimani also interviews pathologist and theology scholar Asma Lamrabet from the Centre for Women’s Studies in Islam, who goes back to close reading of Quran to support her feminist arguments. Lamrabet points out that the Quran does not deal with matters of sexuality and that virginity is not even mentioned once in the whole text. In her interpretation, women are conceptualized as free human beings in the Quran. Moreover, Lamrabet argues that over time rigidity took over the place of compassion, affection, and intimacy that were historically present in Islamic societies.[17] Lamrabet advocates for a decolonial model, rather than the Western, and points out that the liberation of women to make their own choices requires a non-hegemonic strategy, a development of a new approach.[18] I find this chapter central to the whole book, as it offers a critical approach to the traditions, as well as possible paths for analyzing social and historical complexities instead of reinforcing hierarchical binary oppositions. In conclusion, Sex and Lies offers brave, lucid, witty, and valuable testimonies about the sexual lives of Moroccan women of different ages, educational backgrounds, and classes, inclusive of lesbian experiences; then testimonies of young women who had no other option but to engage in prostitution to support their families; testimonies of married, divorced, and unmarried women who speak freely about desire and practice sexual pleasures despite of repressive circumstances. The book offers a convincing critique of Moroccan laws and public morality related to sexuality and provides an important argument that sexually repressive measures are not derived from Islamic tradition. By providing more details on the French colonial origins of the Moroccan repressive legislation, Slimani could build a stronger argument both against Moroccan conservatives who, according to her, would argue that sexual repression is an Islamic tradition, and against French liberal intellectuals whom she suspects would accuse her of Islamophobia and Orientalism. In fact, this book challenges the Orientalist stereotypes about Islamic societies, and especially about Muslim women in many ways. What I find missing from Slimani’s analysis is the critique of European colonialism and misogyny; a problematization of the strands of the Enlightenment that offered no rights or freedom to women; and ultimately, the critique of so-called middle-class morality. I argue that these elements, sorely missing from her analysis, are core to the contemporary rise of far-right movements in Europe, which are also oppressive towards sexual freedoms and women’s rights. In that sense, I consider that a critique of “universal Enlightenment values,” would allow Slimani to build a more convincing argument for overcoming binary oppositions and hierarchies. [1] The title of the French original is Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle au Maroc [2] Slimani, Leïla. 2020. Sex and Lies . Translated by Sophie Lewis. Faber & Faber. Society on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, p. 58 [3] Sex and Lies , pp. 68-69 [4] Sex and Lies , p. 2 [5] Ibid., p. 70 [6] p. 70 [7] p. 5 [8] p. 70 [9] P. 7 [10] p. 63 [11] p. 72 [12] p. 15, p. 19, etc. [13] p. 31 [14] p. 94 [15] p. 94 [16] p. 95 [17] p. 102 [18] p. 102 References: Slimani, Leïla. Sex and Lies. Translated by Sophie Lewis. Faber & Faber, 2020. Kindle.

Gilberta Golinelli University of Bologna Researcher Gilberta Golinelli is an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches English Literature, Feminist Methodologies and Critical Utopias. Her main research areas include the Shakespearean canon and the Elizabethan Theatre, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Women’s Utopias in the Early Modern Age. She is the referent of the PhD program EDGES (European Doctorate in Women’s and Gender Studies) and vice coordinator of Master Gemma (University of Bologna). Publications: “Educational space(s) and female communities in Margaret Cavendish’s The Female Academy and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Part 1”, «PROSPERO» , 2024, 29. “Of Cimbalin king of England”: The controversial representation of the British past in Cymbeline”. TEXTUS , XXXVII(2), 2024. Gender Models Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism . Bologna, Italy: Bononia University Press, 2018.

Team Bologna Rita Monticelli Principal Investigator Rita Monticelli is a full professor of English at the University of Bologna; she teaches gender studies, feminists and cultural studies, and theories and history of culture in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her research includes memory and trauma studies, the global novel, utopia and dystopia, travel literature, and memory and trauma studies in contemporary dystopian fiction and visual culture. She also works on issues connected to human rights and intercultural and interreligious dialogues. In these areas, she has published and co-edited volumes and essays. Amongst them are The Politics of the Body in Women’s Literatures (2012) and the recent essay “Transmedia Science Fiction and New Social Imaginaries” in The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities (with other authors). She is a member of international European research networks and PhD programs centred on gender studies and cultures of equality. She is part of the international councils on diversity and social Inclusion and projects on the New Humanities. She directs the Centre for Utopian Studies and coordinates the International Erasmus Mundus GEMMA (women's and gender studies) at the University of Bologna. She is the representative of the University of Bologna for the SSH Deans and the board of the Gender&Diversity group of the GUILD (European Research-Intensive Universities), a member of the governing Board of EASSH (European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities). She is currently a member of the City Council of Bologna and a delegate for human rights and interreligious and intercultural dialogue. Francesco Cattani Researcher Francesco Cattani is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bologna, where he teaches “Literatures of English Speaking Countries”. He also collaborates with the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree GEMMA, Women's and Gender Studies, for which he teaches "The Re-vision of the Body in Women's Literature" and "English Women's Literature". He is member of the Diversity Council of the UNA Europa European University Alliance and of the Working Group on Equity, Inclusion and Diversity of the University of Bologna. His research blends postcolonial and decolonial studies, gender studies, science fiction, dystopia, and the posthuman to tackle repetitive patterns in the construction of the non-human. Another area of interest is black British literature and visual culture. He has published essays on the deconstruction of European identity from a transnational perspective, Bernardine Evaristo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Ingrid Pollard, Hanif Kureishi. Gilberta Golinelli Researcher Gilberta Golinelli is an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches English Literature, Feminist Methodologies and Critical Utopias. Her main research areas include the Shakespearean canon and the Elizabethan Theatre, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Women’s Utopias in the Early Modern Age. She is the referent of the PhD program EDGES (European Doctorate in Women’s and Gender Studies) and vice coordinator of Master Gemma (University of Bologna). Her recent publications include Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women’s Utopianism. Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Mary Astell (2018); Il testo shakespeariano dialoga con i nuovi storicismi, il materialismo culturale e gli studi di genere (2012); the coediting of the volume Women’s Voices and Genealogies in Literary Studies in English (2019).

Katherine Wimpenny Coventry University Principal Investigator Katherine Wimpenny, PhD, MA, DipCOT, CertEd, is a Professor of Research in Global Education at the Research Centre for Global Learning, Coventry University, UK. She is the Theme Lead for ‘Education without Boundaries’ and has 24+ years of experience in higher education research and practice. Katherine’s research with colleagues, locally and globally, is grounded in comprehensive internationalisation, emphasising inclusive pedagogies, interdisciplinarity, social justice, decolonisation, and the role of the ethically engaged university. Her research considers a diversity of learning spaces (digital, face-to-face, blended, formal, informal, and non-formal) that interweave to impact educational opportunities that can connect international learning communities and the university to its locale. She is experienced in a range of approaches to inquiry, including Qualitative Research Synthesis, Arts-Based Educational Research, Participatory and Action Research, Appreciative Inquiry, and Transdisciplinary Feminist Research, including Post Qualitative Inquiry. Recent publications: Wimpenny, K., Jacobs, L., Dawson, M. and Hagenmeier, C. (2024) ‘The potential of collaborative online international learning as a border thinking third space for global citizenship education’. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 16 (1), 29–42. Liu, Dan, Yi Deng, and Katherine Wimpenny. 2024. “Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of Translanguaging Pedagogy in Teaching English for Academic Purposes in China.” Teaching in Higher Education 29 (5): 1234–52.

Team Granada Adelina Sánchez Espinosa Principal Investigator Adelina Sánchez Espinosa is senior Lecturer at the University of Granada and Scientific Coordinator of GEMMA: Erasmus Mundus Master and Consortium in Women's and Gender Studies; PI for the "Reception, modes and gender" Andalusian Research Group and the "Gender Responsible Lecturing Labs: Interfacing cultural and visual cultures Andalusian Research Project of Excellence, UGR PI for H2020 MSCA EUTERPE Project (EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender in Transnational Perspective") and a Horizon Chanse project: DIGISCREENS Identities and Democratic values on European digital screens: Distribution, reception and representation. She is Series Editor of the Researching with GEMMA collection (Peter Lang) She was the Vice-President of AOIFE (Association of Institutions for Feminist Research and Education in Europe): Director of International Relations for the UGR, Executive Secretary of the UGR Women's Studies Research Institute and Series Editor for the UGR "FEMINAE" Book collection. Some of her latest publications are: "Feminist Counter-Cinema and Decolonial Countervisuality. Un'ora sola ti vorrei and Pays Barbare (with Calderón Sandoval, Studies in Documentary Film, 2021); Seeking Eccentricity, Special Issue for Sociology and Technoscience Journal and Feminist Research Alliances: Affective Convergences (Peter Lang, 2022). Angela Harris Sánchez Researcher Angela Harris Sánchez holds a BA in Art history (Granada University), an MPhil in Art Therapy (Complutense University), the GEMMA double Erasmus Mundus Master and a double International PhD in Women's Studies, Discourses and Gender Practices (UGR) and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (University of Bologna). She has been a National Research Fellow (FPU) and is now UGR-Postdoc and lecturer in the Archaeology Department. Recent publications are "Artherapy, Queer Failure and Horizontal Learning Experience in Students' Postmemory Family Narratives" (co-author). "Beyond Being: Dissident (ificatory) Responses towards a Heritage of Becoming" and "Contesting power in public art spaces. Liminal p(l)aces, diverting methodologies and observant participation in Valor y Cambio". Beatriz Revelles-Benavente Researcher Beatriz Revelles-Benavente is Permanent Lecturer at the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation and the local coordinator for the GEMMA: Erasmus Mundus Master in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada. She is co-editor of one section in the journal Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research. She has also co-edited the collection Teaching Gender: Feminist Responsibility and Politics in Times of Crisis and is the author of Feminist Literature as Everyday Use: A New Materialist Methodology for Critical Thinking. Before, she was granted a postdoctoral fellowship "Juan de la Cierva" at the University of Barcelona (UB) at the department of Cultural Pedagogies. She was also part of the board committee of the European Association Atgender: The European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation. Orianna Calderón-Sandoval Researcher Orianna Calderón-Sandoval is Junior Lecturer in Gender Studies and English Cultures at the University of Granada (UGR). She is also affiliated to the Women’s and Gender Studies Research Institute of UGR. Her research interests are located at the intersections of gender/feminist studies and film/audiovisual/transmedia studies. Among her recent publications are “Implementing Gender Equality Policies in the Spanish Film Industry”, International Journal of Cultural Policy (2021); “Debating Sexual Consent in the Teen Series The Hockey Girls: Reactions of Instagram Audiences”, co-written with Isabel Villegas-Simón and Pilar Medina-Bravo, Sex Education (2023); “Entanglements of feminist activism and gender equality policy in the Spanish and Swedish film industries: between convergence and critique”, co-written with Maria Jansson, Journal of Gender Studies (2024); and “Race-ing Masculinity: An Intersectional Analysis of the Spanish Public Platform Series Riders", co-written with Ángela Rivera-Izquierdo and Adelina Sánchez Espinosa, Feminist Media Histories (2024). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9113-9010 She completed her PhD at the universities of Granada and Bologna, with a research project that focuses on feminist practices in documentary cinema. She was an Early Stage Researcher for GRACE “Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe”, Horizon 2020, Marie Curie Research Project (ESR 13: Visualising Gender Equality in Europe through Art and Screen).