INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCE RESEARCH
IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY

This paper discusses the perception of women's resistance in Palestinian literature as seen in selected fiction of Sahar Khalifeh by university students. Khalifeh has a central place in the history of Palestinian literature, because her novels confront both colonial domination and patriarchal domination, and do not portray women as marginal witnesses, but as active agents of survival and moral judgement, as well as political resistance. While there has been a considerable body of criticism examining resistance, nationalism, gender and domestic space in her fiction, far less attention has been given to the ways in which student readers interpret these resistant female figures in the academic space. This study fills that gap using an empirical survey model of English and literature students. Five dimensions are measured by the study, which include empathy with female characters, recognition of domestic resistance, perceived women resistance, political awareness through fiction and curriculum relevance. The results show that students have generally shown a good recognition of resistance of women in Khalifeh's fiction. Female students document significantly higher scores than male students across all the main constructs and previous exposure to feminist or Palestinian literary texts is linked with higher perception of resistance and higher relevance of the curriculum. Correlation and regression result further proves the fact that perceived women's resistance and political awareness are the best predictors of whether students find such literature important in the university curriculum or not. This paper contends that the fiction of Khalifeh can be pedagogical on its own as well as in teaching the history of the colonised societies to understand, empathise, and critically appreciate gendered resistance.