Summary
Palestinian scholar of English literature, born in Ramallah in 1937, who with Sharif Kanaana collected, transcribed, and translated the forty-five tales of Speak, Bird, Speak Again, and co-authored its Introduction (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 76-125, 184-214).
Details
- Alan Dundes’s foreword gives his biography: Friends Boys’ School, Ramallah; B.S. in electrical engineering, Heald Engineering College, San Francisco, 1959; B.A. (magna cum laude) in English, California State University at Hayward, 1964; M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1969) in English, University of California, Davis; taught English at Brock University, Ontario (1969-1975), the University of Jordan (1975-1977), and Birzeit University, where he chaired the English department from 1978 to 1980 and met Kanaana (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 76-125).
- Dundes relates that in 1978, at Birzeit, Muhawi was reintroduced to Palestinian folklore through the journal Heritage and Society (Al-turath wa-al-mujtama`), remembered the raconteurs of his Ramallah childhood, and, after Sam Pickering asked him for illustrations of Palestinian traditions for Children’s Literature, approached Kanaana and heard his tape recordings (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 76-125).
- The Acknowledgments record a postdoctoral fellowship awarded to Muhawi by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley in 1983 (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 126-145).
Related pages
Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, Sharif Kanaana, Alan Dundes, Birzeit University