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Analyzes the creative activism of women and youth in Syria from 2011 to 2024.
Ululating from the Underground examines the gendered, artistic, and cultural creations of Syrian women from the 2011 uprisings, through the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, and until the summer of 2025. Identifying these women as syrenas, Banah el Ghadbanah uses the metaphor of siren songs to understand how the utterances and "creative noise" of Syrian women have been overlooked, ignored, or misunderstood by global leaders and mainstream English-language media. She analyzes the protests, poetics, pedagogies, and performances that Syrian women and youth developed under siege, contextualizing them within a framework of Shamiya feminism, an earth-based network of Levantine feminized resistance. Weaving together media and historical analyses, research into the virtual archive of the Syrian Revolution, interviews with and oral histories of Syrian women activists, ethnographic notes, and autoethnographic creative self-inscriptions, el Ghadbanah argues that the protests of syrena subjects enact somatic, insurgent moments of freedom in the face of imperialist, authoritarian, and extremist violence. The book is an intervention into ethnic studies, gender studies, Middle East studies, and Syria studies, highlighting a wide range of Syrian creative work for a variety of audiences.
"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
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 Illustrations
Preface:"Will the roses bloom again?" July 2025
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Syrena Subjectivity and Embodied Gendered Revolutionary Wisdom
1: 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 Body
Notes
Bibliography
Index