This volume is a welcome start to the long-overdue project of challenging stereotypes of the Gulf as a backward, tribal culture that has been overwhelmed by global cosmopolitanism, argues Reviews Editor Samer Abboud.
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Storm in a shisha
Some feared the 2008 novel The Jewel of Medina would create the fiercest backlash among Muslims since the Danish cartoon scandal. So why hasn’t it? Shereen El Feki looks at the politics surrounding the book’s publication.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Media Censorship in the Middle East
Jabbar al-Obaidi’s typology of the region’s media is a valuable contribution, writes John Measor, but imprecise analysis and failure to engage with existing scholarship undermines the work as a whole.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Asad in Search of Legitimacy: Message and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press under Hafiz and Bashar
Side-by-side renderings of Arabic articles and their English translations make the book useful for students and researchers, yet crude generalizations and culturalist arguments deflect from Kedar’s analytical contributions, argues Book Review Editor Samer Abboud.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | The Moral Resonance of Arab Media
Flagg Miller’s The Moral Resonance of Arab Media remains at a rarefied, theoretical level, but bears ample rewards for advanced students of Arabic literature, media studies, communication anthropology and public sphere studies, writes Zuzanna Olszewska.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World
Josh Rushing’s Mission Al Jazeera is cookie-cutter "celebrity bio" whose analysis of Al Jazeera and other Arab media developments relies heavily on other scholars, says Tom Scudder.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | New Media and the New Middle East
While the strength of the writing and research varies by chapter, New Media and the New Middle East adds valuable data to a field where usage statistics and baseline information about audiences and advertising are virtually non-existent, says Book Reviews Editor Courtney C. Radsch.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation
“Shafik shows that cinema has enabled filmmakers and viewers to go through cathartic exercises to express dissatisfaction, grief, imaginary empowerment and solidarity, and argues that this artistic channel is especially important because Egypt lacks an adequate civil society,” writes Nesreen Khashan.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life
“While many contributors present fresh ethnographic research and �their weak arguments, inconclusive results and poor editing undermine the collection as a whole,” argues Anna Swank in her review of Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life.
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion
Steve Tatham makes a strong contribution to correcting the record on Al Jazeera, especially in the wake of the negative publicity directed against the channel by American officials after September 11th and during the continuing war in Iraq, says Laura Smith in her review of Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion.
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