Tara Mendola

Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellow in the Humanities

20052006 Forum on Word and Image

Tara Mendola

Comparative Literature, Literary Theory

College '06

From the Odalisque to the Chador: Representations of North African Women

At what points in certain historical junctures are one culture’s representation of women (mis)translated into another through word and image? For Middle Eastern women, is there any symbolic value consistently attached to the images and narratives about these women as they are traded between cultures? How do male narratives relate to the image that actual female writers in the mid-east present?