Shahrazad, the legendary fictional storyteller who spun the tales of the 1,001 Arabian Nights, has long been rendered as a silent exotic beauty by Western film and fiction adaptations. Now, she talks back to present a new image of Muslim women.

In Liberating Shahrazad, Suzanne Gauch analyzes how postcolonial writers and filmmakers from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have reclaimed the storyteller in order to portray Muslim women in ways that highlight their power to shape their own destinies. Gauch looks at Maghrebian works that incorporate Shahrazad's storytelling techniques into...

Exploring films made in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria from 1985 to 2009, Suzanne Gauch illustrates how late post-independence and early twenty-first century North African cinema prefigured many of the transformations in perception and relation that stunned both participants and onlookers during the remarkable uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring. Through multifaceted examinations of key films by nine filmmakers--Farida Benlyazid, Mohamed Chouikh, Nacer Khemir, Nabil Ayouch, Lyes Salem, Nadia El Fani, Tariq Teguia, Faouzi Bensaidi, and Nejib Belkadhi--Gauch delineates the shifting relation of...

Exploring films made in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria from 1985 to 2009, Suzanne Gauch illustrates how late post-independence and early twenty-first century North African cinema prefigured many of the transformations in perception and relation that stunned both participants and onlookers during the remarkable uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring. Through multifaceted examinations of key films by nine filmmakers--Farida Benlyazid, Mohamed Chouikh, Nacer Khemir, Nabil Ayouch, Lyes Salem, Nadia El Fani, Tariq Teguia, Faouzi Bensaidi, and Nejib Belkadhi--Gauch delineates the shifting relation of...