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 »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 …
Read More »FILM REVIEW | Revolution from a Farmer’s Perch – A Review of I Am The People
Anna Rousillion’s feature documentary I Am the People follows Farraj and his family through four tumultuous years in Egyptian history, beginning just before revolution and chronicling their lives in its aftermath. Farraj, the film’s protagonist, is a wiry farmer in the southern province of Luxor, who earns a living tilling …
Read More »State Control Over Film Production in Egypt
This essay is part of an ethnographic study of Egyptian film production conducted between August 2013 and September 2015. The study is centered on participant observation within two main film companies, New Century Film Production and Al-Batrik Art Production, in addition to interviews conducted with key actors in the industry …
Read More »Creative Insurgency and the Celebrity President: Politics and Popular Culture from the Arab Spring to the White House
Read an excerpt of Marwan Kraidy's latest book The Naked Blogger of Cairo here. On Tuesday, December 6, 2016, a strange sight appeared on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. Close to city hall, passersby saw a four-meter high gilded statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a suit, legs firmly planted …
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