In Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, Ariella Azoulay interrogates issues of visual culture, in particular photography, the role of spectator-critics, body politics, and citizenship, through the lens of the Palestinian struggle. She argues that the boundaries of the aesthetic, the political, and the civil perpetuate power relations of nation-states and exclusions. Kiranjeet Kaur Dhillon reviews.

Rami Khater discusses the implications of automated translation based on cloud computing and warns that the subaltern’s narrative and voice could be removed from the interpretation of all human history if our collective knowledge passes through the filters of these trained algorithms.

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.

Enough already with the 'media dialogues' between Arab and Western journalists. The fortunes spent on these conferences could be put to much better use in cooperative lessons-learned networks and long-term training programs, argues Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak.

October 2007. Speaking to Arab Media & Society’s George Weyman in July 2007, Sue Phillips, London bureau chief for Al Jazeera International, reflects on the network’s first year and the changes and challenges that lie ahead.

Larry Register’s forced departure from the US public diplomacy channel marks a low point for American efforts at broadcasting to the Middle East, an entirely predictable debacle which likely puts paid to even the slender hopes that the station might turn itself around argues Editorial Board Member Marc Lynch.

In this content analysis of U.S. Public Diplomacy radio station Radio Sawa, veteran Middle East broadcasting specialist Sam Hilmy argues that the pop-music driven channel is not meeting its commitment to provide “accurate, timely and relevant news about the Middle East, the world and the United States.”

Readers of American Encounters will be heartened by the reminder that — regardless of the administration or specific policy — there remain elements in the U.S. foreign policy establishment dedicated to engaging with Arab audiences and keeping avenues of communication open, argues Will Ward.

By scrapping Voice of America in the Middle East, the US has both undercut its own public diplomacy interests and the interests of listeners in the region itself, argues Laurie Kassman.

That Arab viewers accept this U.S. government-funded station as credible is a great victory, especially after being on the air little more than three years. That some Arab viewers find the assertions of advocates for freedom jarring to their ears is a price we will gladly pay, argues outgoing Broadcasting Board of Governors Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.