Moulay Idriss El Maarouf

I am at present a post graduate student at the Cultural Studies Centre in Fez. Before that, I had my BA degree from the Faculty of Letters, University Mohamed V, Rabat, Morocco. I am a member of CSM, an international association, where we organise a number of youth-bound workshops. For instance, I teach Arabic to the westerners (Europeans, Americans, Asian etc.) who come to Morocco for volunteering work, jointly with other educational activities.

Research Interests

My fields of interest include: Cultural Studies; literatures on Morocco; translation (English, Arabic); and my present research dwells on issues of gender construction in Morocco, Moroccan festivals, globalization and advertising. Prior to this, I wrote a number of papers, on the harem, on the culture of transportation in Morocco, one on Farida Benlyazid's Women's Wiles, and yet another one on women in media.

In addition to these critical concentrations, I have always been enchanted by the magical workings of creative writing. During my childhood and late adolescence, my Arabic short stories won a number of prizes. Today, I am writing short stories in English, shot through with Moroccan content, that linger on issues of identity, Moroccan subjectivity, oppressions within gender and the like.

Publications

· A short essay on hijab and its controversies, entitled 'The Politics of Hyperveiling'.

· Translated a number of newspaper articles during a project with the Ferguson Centre. Here is a sample of my translations 

· Translated a chapter in a book on the martyr Zerktouni from Arabic into English, a book to be finalised by Sadik Rddad

· Published 'Billboarding and Cardboarding the Urban Space in Fez' on the website of Brian Edwards, the writer of Morocco Bound.