Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's Spectral Middle East

In: Feminist media histories, Band 3, Heft 1, S. 25-49

Abstract

This essay dialogically examines materials from Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's largely self-curated and reflexively annotated archive, illuminating overlooked facets of her life and work, in particular her bicultural upbringing, elements of syncretism that inform her oeuvre, and her practices of self-mythologizing. The text is divided into interconnected sections that explore the following facets of the spectral Middle East in Hallock-Greenewalt's life and work: the remembrance of the Syrian mother, the activation of pervasive Orientalist discourses, genealogical expansions through the figure of Hallock-Greenewalt as mother-inventor, and archival interventions. It argues that her autobiographical writings engage her mythologized past in service of the construction of hagiographic narratives of female agency.