Focus and Scope
Albuchuts: Journal of Arabic Literary Studies publishes scholarly research devoted to the study of Arabic literature across historical periods, genres, literary traditions, media, and critical perspectives. The journal welcomes original research articles and scholarly review articles that contribute to the development of Arabic literary studies through theoretical, historical, philological, comparative, textual, and interdisciplinary approaches.
The journal's primary focus is Arabic literature and related literary phenomena. Its scope includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:
1. Arabic Literary Studies
Research on classical, modern, and contemporary Arabic literature, including:
- poetry, prose, drama, and other literary genres;
- literary theory and criticism;
- literary history;
- poetics;
- narratology;
- stylistics;
- reception and reader studies;
- intertextuality;
- authorship and literary production;
- literary circulation and canon formation;
- children's literature and young adult literature;
- digital literature and emerging literary forms.
2. Arabic Philology and Literary Manuscript Studies
The journal welcomes philological and manuscript-based research that contributes to the study of Arabic literature and literary traditions. Relevant areas include:
- textual criticism and textual scholarship;
- Arabic literary manuscripts;
- manuscript transmission and textual traditions;
- critical editions of literary texts;
- textual variants and the history of texts;
- codicology and paleography;
- manuscript provenance, circulation, and reception;
- relationships between manuscript culture and Arabic literary history.
Studies of manuscripts whose primary content falls outside literature may be considered when their textual, historical, or intellectual significance makes a substantive contribution to the understanding of Arabic literary traditions.
3. Comparative and Transnational Literature
Comparative studies involving Arabic literature and other literary traditions, languages, or cultural contexts are welcome.
Comparative and transnational submissions should maintain Arabic literature as a substantial object of analysis and demonstrate a clear contribution to Arabic literary studies.
4. Literary Translation, Adaptation, Film, and Intermediality
The journal welcomes research on literary translation involving Arabic literature, including the translation, reception, circulation, and transformation of literary works across languages and cultures.
Studies of film adaptations, screen adaptations, and relationships between Arabic literature and cinema are also welcome. Research may examine the transformation of literary works into film, comparative analysis of literary and cinematic narratives, intertextuality, narrative structure, characterization, representation, and other forms of interaction between literature and audiovisual media.
Studies of adaptation, remediation, and intermedial relations between literature, film, theatre, digital media, and other forms of cultural expression may be considered when their primary analytical contribution remains connected to literary studies.
5. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Arabic Literature
Albuchuts welcomes interdisciplinary approaches from linguistics, cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, religious studies, media studies, digital humanities, ecocriticism, translation studies, and related fields.
Such approaches are considered within the journal's scope when they are employed to investigate literary texts, literary practices, or literary phenomena and when the study makes a substantive contribution to Arabic literary studies.
Linguistic approaches, for example, may be used to examine style, characterization, dialogue, metaphor, discourse, narrative voice, or other literary dimensions. Cultural approaches may be used to investigate identity, representation, memory, gender, heritage, ideology, or social experience as represented and negotiated through literary texts.
6. Emerging Approaches in Arabic Literary Studies
The journal is open to new theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary developments in literary studies, including digital humanities, environmental humanities, affect studies, memory studies, spatial studies, world literature, diaspora studies, and other emerging approaches, provided that Arabic literature remains central to the research.
Scope Boundaries
The use of a literary work merely as a source of linguistic, cultural, historical, religious, or social data does not by itself place a manuscript within the scope of Albuchuts. Similarly, the use of an Arabic manuscript as a research object does not automatically place a study within the journal's scope if its primary contribution is unrelated to literature or literary traditions.
Manuscripts should demonstrate how their analysis contributes to the understanding of literary form, meaning, aesthetics, narrative, style, genre, representation, reception, textual transmission, adaptation, literary history, or other dimensions of literary study.
The journal does not normally consider manuscripts devoted exclusively to general linguistics, Arabic language teaching, language acquisition, non-literary translation, general cultural studies, film studies without a substantive connection to literature, politics, international relations, religious studies, social sciences, or manuscript studies unrelated to Arabic literary traditions, unless the research substantially engages with literary texts or literary phenomena and contributes directly to Arabic literary studies.
