Abstract This paper examines the impact of social media in developing Arab women’s interest in sports. A survey questionnaire based on the uses and gratification theory was distributed to 411 Arab women from different age groups, education levels, and employment statuses. In analyzing the results to explore the participants’ motivation …
Read More »The Impact of Social Networking Site Use on Social Capital and Happiness: A Field Study of Arab and Non-Arab Residents in the UAE (Arabic)
Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. As social networking sites (SNSs) grow in size across the United Arab Emirates, they are increasingly utilized as avenues for social partnership and sustainable development. These networks are also used as a means of creating social cohesion among the country’s residents. This is achieved …
Read More »Infantilizing Arab politics: A quick reading of the viral Ramadan 2018 Zain telecom ad
Since 2011, the Kuwaiti telecom company Zain Group, one of the largest in the Middle East, has produced a series of popular ads broadcast annually during Ramadan. The ads are songs, usually featuring celebrities singing and dancing with children. Since 2015, the ads have become noticeably more political. In 2016, …
Read More »DMC TV Network Takes Over
DMC TV network started broadcasting its long list of television programs and series in Egypt on January 14, establishing itself as a major player in the Arab media landscape. So far, little information has been made available clarifying leadership structure and budget, however based on the quality and diversity of programming, …
Read More »BOOK EXCERPT | Creative Insurgency in The Naked Blogger of Cairo
In the wake of the Arab uprisings, journalists, activists, and scholars coupled creative with revolution (or dissent, protest, resistance) to describe political graffiti, rap, art, and video. Distinguished institutions, from the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands to the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, lend the concept gravitas. …
Read More »INTERVIEW | Past, Present, and Future Violence in Lebanese Comics
During a lecture entitled “‘I Think We Will be Calm During the Next War’: Past, Present, and Future Violence in Lebanese Comics,” Ghenwa Hayek, assistant professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Chicago, discussed Lebanese comics as a means of reflecting war and conflict. After her presentation she …
Read More »BOOK EXCERPT | Beirut: Past, Present, Future? Memory and Anxiety in Contemporary Lebanese Comics in Beirut, Imagining the City
The field of comics scholarship has expanded radically in the past decade as the medium has entered into the realm of mainstream academic discourse, thanks to the contributions of scholars who are themselves comic artists, like Will Eisner and Scott McCloud, and others, notably Hillary Chute and Jared Gardner.[1] Comics …
Read More »Revolutionary Art or “Revolutonizing Art”? Making Art on the Streets of Cairo
In an article published on December 17, 2014, Surti Singh, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Cairo (AUC), wrote that “a new set of questions is crystallizing about the role of art in contemporary Egypt” and posed the following questions: “Can art still preserve the revolutionary …
Read More »BOOK EXCERPT | Mohamed Chouikh: From Anticolonial Commemoration to a Cinema of Contestation in Ten Arab Filmmakers
The following is an excerpt from the anthology Ten Arab Filmmakers edited by Josef Gugler and published by Indiana University Press (2015). Mohamed Chouikh occupies a key position as a kind of relay between the post-colonial, idealized Algeria of the 1960s and what one might call the contested, dysfunctional Algeria …
Read More »BOOK EXCERPT | Syria’s Drama Outpouring from Syria from Reform to Revolt, Vol. 2
Enduring Commitment Syrian drama has oscillated between accommodating and challenging persistent authoritarianism, the Islamic tendency, and the neoliberal moment. In addition to sensational thrillers and costume dramas, Syrians continue to produce works that harken back to an earlier era of Arab cultural production. Realist dramas join sociopolitical satires in critiquing …
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