Ululating from the Underground

Banah el Ghadbanah is an independent scholar with a PhD in ethnic studies. She is the author of La Syrena: Visions of a Syrian Mermaid from Space.

• List of IllustrationsPreface:"Will the roses bloom again?" July 2025AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Syrena Subjectivity and Embodied Gendered Revolutionary Wisdom1. Shamiya Feminism and Syria's Struggle for Dignity 2. The Illegible Syrenas: From Feared to Fantasy 3. Listening to Syrenas: Creative Protests in the Syrian Revolution and Communities of Care 4. The Call of Syrenas: Poetics, Performances, and Pedagogies in the Syrian Revolution 5. The Revolution is Somatic: Diaspora, Ghorba, & The BodyNotesBibliographyIndex

"Ululating from the Underground is a bulwark in the face of resounding grief and loss—it grounds us in the tremendous strength of the Syrian people and illuminates their creative and beautiful strategies for both resisting oppression and uplifting life. Fostering a conversation that spans from Middle East gender studies to critical ethnic studies and everything in between, there is truly nothing like it." — Amira Jarmakani, author of Imagining Arab Womanhood: The Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems, and Belly Dancers in the U.S."This book keeps alive the cultural memory of Syrian women's gendered aspirations, struggles, triumphs, pain, and multitextured resistance practices and labors of love. It prohibits us from forgetting and dares us to imagine what this underrepresented, understudied world of creative resistance might look like, and it invites us to speak more ethically and intelligently about these women and the politically, therapeutically, and aesthetically oriented sanctuaries they have cocreated and inhabited, often across sectarian and ethnic lines and amid brutal surveillance, violence, and persecution. I am honored to have reviewed this book. I am a better scholar, professor, human, for it." — Nadine A. Sinno, author of A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut