The Project

The project is a study of the complex and understudied history of violence against Algerian women, particularly during the Civil War in the 1990s. It is an empirical study of the representation of first-hand eyewitness testimony in various cultural forms. It presents rare (not to say inexistent) testimonies by Algerian women who were forced to remain silent for 2 decades as a result of the Amnesty Law (1999), which is what became later known as the 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation (CNPR). The latter, i.e., the (CNPR) not only considers questioning the past a political offence, it goes further to make whoever deals with the ‘national tragedy’ risk facing a prison sentence of three to five years and a hefty fine. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach to memory and testimony, which can be applied in different contexts. The focus of the project is around the untold stories of the ‘Civil War’ of the 1990s in Algeria, known as the ‘Black Decade’, through various media. These testimonies represent ‘unofficial narratives’ or ‘Alternative Narratives’ of the Algerian Civil war. I use the word ‘Alternative’ to emphasise that these narratives represent testimonies that are banned in Algeria because of the CNPR.

Through eyewitness testimonies the issue of sexual violence during the Civil War in Algeria in the 1990s is highlighted. Those testimonies are then transferred and translated into different media and different languages in order to analyse the effects of the medium on the creation of authority and authenticity in the cultural memory of the Algerian history.

Dr Anissa Daoudi, Principal Investigator

Anissa Daoudi

I am currently a lecturer in Arabic and Translation Studies. I am Head of Arabic area and a Specialist for the Translation Studies (Arabic-English-Arabic). My research area is Language and Power in the MENA region and how they manifest in various discourses (particularly gender discourses). My research interests extend to the areas of Translation, Memory and Narrativity. I also have research interest into Francophone Postcolonial literature and culture.

Prior to coming to Birmingham, I held an ESRC Fellowship for 3 years at the University of Durham, Department of Modern Languages (Arabic section), working on a research project entitled Globalisation and its impact on Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic and dialects. It was an interdisciplinary project analysing the linguistic changes that happened to Arabic as a result of the ‘Internet Revolution’ using an Internet based corpus, developing into deeper analyses of the cyberspace and the relationship between language and the various discourses that emerged prior, during and post Arab Revolutions.

For my PhD, I studied at the University of Leeds under the supervision of Prof. Dionisius Agius, working on the ‘Strategies EFL learners use to decode and encode idioms with particular reference to the bilingual Dictionaries, Arabic-English-Arabic.

As for my Masters degree, I studied at the University of Leeds, School of Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). My dissertation was on ‘Traditional Qur’anic Schools: An Anthropological Study’, in which I analyse Qur’anic schools in Algeria as language large classes. I studied the Qur’anic schools in terms of large class management and teaching techniques.

At the University of Constantine (Algeria), I studied for 4 years for a BA in English. My BA ‘memoire’ was on ‘Victorian Women Writers’.

For more information, please see my staff profile.

Funding

Dr Anissa Daoudi was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship in 2016 for this project.

You can read more about the project funding and find out more about the project funder, the Leverhulme Trust.

Contact Us

If you'd like more information about the project please get in touch by emailing us at a.daoudi@bham.ac.uk

Testimonies in translations

Artistic testimonial translation

Literary testimonial translation

Eye witness testimonies as translations

Secondary testimonial translations

Media coverage

Project partners

Publications

“Untranslatability of sexual violence against Algerian women: the Black Decade”. Special Issue with Boundary 2, Duke University. July 2018
https://www.boundary2.org/category/b2o-an-online-journal/sexual-violence-in-mena/

(Arabic)

سرديات وترجمات العنف الجنسي في الحروب في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال افريقي

http://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/anissa-daoudi-introduction-narrating-and-translating-sexual-violence-at-wartime-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-mena-region-arabic/

(French)
Narration et traduction de la Violence sexuelle en temps de guerre dans le Moyen Orient et l’Afrique du Nord
https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/anissa-daoudi-introduction-narrating-and-translating-sexual-violence-at-wartime-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-mena-region-french/

Articles:

Short articles:

Presentations/Public Talks: