• Faculty of Arts - Cairo University
  • (+2)(0)122 344 1334
  • fspc@popular-culture.org

News

  • Latest News
  • Recent Publications
  • Upcoming Events

We are Back!

read more

أسطورة أغاني المهرجانات يعلن اعتزاله

 المدونة فيديو خربان هنا:

read more

How to Stop Gentrification

Individuals moving to newly-hip neighborhoods admit they are part of the problem. What can they do?

read more

“Palestine is now 74% urban. Over the last 10-15 years, urban sprawl has resulted in extended built-up spaces connecting cities, refugee camps, towns, and villages into wide-spread urban areas with indistinguishable borders. Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem, and Ramallah have each merged with surrounding villages to form large cities with multiple jurisdictions. Often, you cannot tell where […]

read more

Call for Submissions: Politics and Pop Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

read more

Report: Informal Systems in Urban Sustainability and Resilience

“As cities across the region continue to grow, so will the complexity of the urban systems upon which their functions rely. Cities are often viewed as “systems of systems”, and it is vital that these systems are fully understood if efforts to enhance their overall sustainability and resilience are to be undertaken (Da Silva, 2013). […]

read more

Reminder: Call Out For Submission – Landscapes that Remain

A Collection of Articles and Photo Essays Tracing Reconfigurations of the Arab World. “Landscape is a vigorous agent in people’s lives. It is what enables them to form meaningful constructions of self in relation to their surroundings. But fragile and precarious nation states are sites for continuous oppression, violence and imperial wars. Processes of corruption, […]

read more

Bidoun: INTERVIEW WITH YASMINE HAMDAN

“During the civil war in Lebanon, music created a secure, magical place. These singers — like Asmahan and Abdel Wahab — were very alive for me. I felt like I belonged with them, and it had nothing to do with politics or social backgrounds or dialect or intellect. I have an intellectual approach to things, […]

read more

CALL FOR PAPERS! “Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es: Movement, Space, and Religious Difference”

Movement and urban transformation have been at the center of multiple histories of displacement (the Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugee crises) that have produced the present situations in the contemporary Middle East. Alongside these histories are realities of religious difference, intersecting religious identity with national tendencies (e.g., Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria), wherein Sunni/Shi’a relations, […]

read more

حارة تي في

الفكرة من العرض هو فتح حوار بين الجمهور والشخصيات عن مفهوم المشاركة، ومحاولة بلورة أفكار عن معنى المشاركة، ماذا نسطيع أن نفعل وكيف وما هو الإطار، وإيه نوع المشاكل إللي بنواجها وإزاي ممكن نتخطاها. الحوار مدته ساعة وبيديره ميسر بيفتح الكلام مع الشخصيات ومع الجمهور. وهنلاقي إنه بشكل تلقائي جدا كل الي موجودين بيتفاعلوا مع […]

read more

Should the Penn Inn subway become a free graffiti wall? Read more at http://www.devonlive.com/should-the-penn-inn-subway-become-a-free-graffiti-wall/story-30353979-detail/story.html#LFqkGJL19U1gu9Pi.99

Turning the Penn Inn roundabout subway into a free graffiti wall has been suggested as part of plans to improve the area. Work has already taken place by Teignbridge Council to plant a wild flower meadow at the site in Newton Abbot.

read more

“The Spatial Turn in Questions of Justice”

read more

Nassim el-Raqs: A dance of mythical creatures on Alexandria’s streets

Now in its seventh consecutive year, Alexandrian contemporary dance festival Nassim el-Raqs is one of very few players remaining from the flurry of public space contemporary art events in Egypt that followed the 2011 revolution.

read more

What does ‘art is for all’ mean?

“Does saying “art is for all” only mean that anyone can enjoy it, or does it also include the right of anyone to produce it?”

read more

Reminder – Landscapes that Remain

Callout for Photo Essays and Articles LANDSCAPES THAT REMAIN TRACING RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE ARAB WORLD Deadline 1 June 2017

read more

The Second 3rd Space Symposium: Decolonising Art Institutions

“… The Institute for Creative Arts’ 3rd Space Symposium is an interdisciplinary event that explores ideas around the imperative to decolonise the university, the role of the creative arts in provoking change, and the dialectic between the settled nature of academic curricula and the spontaneity of transformation.”

read more

Conference Paper and Photo Essay at Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia, June09-12, 2017

This conference seeks to illuminate and explore research and expressions of human mobility especially as related to cultural and social aspects. Papers pertaining to human mobility, refugee assistance, heritage formation and preservation (i.e., of both new and existing residents), social cohesion, borderlands issues, historical transformation and maintenance of social space, new community formation and other […]

read more

Landscapes that Remain

Callout for Photo Essays and Articles LANDSCAPES THAT REMAIN TRACING RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE ARAB WORLD Deadline 1 June 2017

read more

Call For Papers: Documenting Trauma: Comics and the Politics of Memory Symposium

“The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), which offers the city’s humanities scholars to collaborate with researchers across other disciplines, and institutions, has issued a Call For Papers for a day-long symposium to be hosting here in Oxford on 22nd June 2017. (The institute also runs a number of comic events through the year).”

read more

Public Spaces and Spatial Practices: Claims from Beirut

“Why do public spaces matter in cities? Is the absence or presence of public spaces in cities related to the rise of political and social movements? Can protests happen in cities that lack public spaces? Do public spaces lead to radical spatial politics? Are public spaces a means for political and social change? Many scholars argue that cities without vibrant, dynamic, interactive public spaces do not breed collective action, as they do not allow people to meet, exchange, disagree, debate, and make claims (Ghorra-Gobin 2001; Low and Smith 2006; Mitchell 2003). Henri Lefebvre (1992) underscores how people should own the city, have a take in its process of spatial production and claim it as a right, through their practices and experiences, especially in the cities’ open spaces. He tells us how the loss of this ownership, seized by ruling authorities who conceive and manage the city according to their own capital-based interests, have made most people disconnect from its spaces and abandon their rights to practice and its public domain.”

read more

Beirut: Imagining the City

BOOK EXCERPT | Beirut: Past, Present, Future? Memory and Anxiety in Contemporary Lebanese Comics in Beirut, Imagining the City

read more

STREET ART AND WOMEN: THE REVOLUTION UNDONE?

Valentina Primo heads out to the GrEEK Campus where Women on Walls – an initiative promoting, producing and protecting street art created by the fairer sex – has taken over the streets with powerful murals, only to find objections from other artists.

read more

CALL FOR PAPERS – the 8th International Conference on Popular Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa: Popular Culture between Site and Flow

We invite papers that investigate these questions and related ones – research that may address the following aspects of cinema, film, street theatre, comedy, poetry, press, digital media, dance, games, folklore, music, storytelling, and television of the MENA region and its diasporas:

? MENA cultural influences in the Caucasus and cultural influences from the Caucasus in the MENA;
? Cultural production on the move;
? Travelling troupes, performers, products; notions of transnational popularity and consumption;
? Popular culture in translation;
? Globalization and adaptation;
? Authenticity and tradition in the face of cultural exchange;
? Transnational and interregional networks (satellite media, social media, activism, among others);
? Popular/cultural hubs and horizons; soundscapes, “food”scapes
? Diasporic audiences; migrant consumers; refugee producers (and variations within);
? Affective flows within MENA cultural production;
? Spatial dynamics of MENA cultural production;
? “Flows” of cognition in pop cultural consumption;
? Performative “flow” as experience by popular MENA singers, performers, storytellers;
? “Sites” of cultural production/struggle/resistance;
? Pop-cultural sedimentation and fixing.
Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words in English to menapoptbilisi@gmail.com by 1 March 2017. Authors of successful abstracts will be notified by 1 April. We welcome presentations based on research in any of the diverse languages of the MENA, but please note that due to technical limitations, the sole language of the conference will be English. Only abstracts in English will be considered. Inquiries welcomed at the address above.

read more

On the rooftops of Egypt’s capital, photographers reclaim the urban landscape

They are the Cairo Bats, a collective of female artists who gather to create staged photographs.

read more

ترجمة: كيف أطلق مسلسل «فريندس» شرارة سقوط الحضارة الغربية؟

“ربما تنظر إلى «فريندس» كعمل كوميدي، لكني لا أشاركك الرأي. بالنسبة إليّ فالمسلسل يؤشر لحقبة قاسية من مناهضة الفكر في الولايات المتحدة، حيث يُضطهد شخص ذكي وموهوب مثل روس عبر مجموعة من الرفاق الحمقى.”

read more

7 Essential Books on Street Art via BrainPickings

What Japan’s manhole covers have to do with Brazil’s favelas and the timeless tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

read more

Personalised Media and Participatory Culture (Project Conference)

“During the conference we will present the findings of our project that concentrated on participatory networks and media in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and UAE. Through mapping the field of youth participation textually and analytically, and through interviews with young people, experts and stakeholders, the research presents a wide and different range of forms of social and political participation of youth in the MENA region. We suggest factors that can explain how young people decide to participate in their communities. Our research evaluates and theorises young people’s civic engagement and public participation not only in the narrow domain of institutional politics, but in a broader sense that encompasses artistic and cultural consumption, cultural remixing and the production of popular culture as an emerging civic participatory culture.”

read more

Dubai Street Museum: murals appear across the city

Artists have been encouraged to transform the appearance of Dubai’s 2nd December Street. Participants have painted murals on 16 of the thoroughfare’s buildings as part of Dubai Street Museum, an initiative promoting the emirates’ visual arts and cultural heritage. Photographer Tom Dulat had a look at some of the results

read more

Growing mega-cities will displace vast tracts of farmland by 2030, study says

Cropland losses will have consequences especially for Asia and Africa, which will experience growing food insecurity as cities expand

read more

ZARAEEB EL SEED

“ArtTalks is delighted to present Zaraeeb, the first solo exhibit in Egypt by internationally acclaimed French-Tunisian artist, eL Seed.

Zaraeeb, comprised of 16 individual artworks and largely made up of zoomed-in fragments of his intricate style, is a continuation of eL Seed’s internationally renowned work, Perception, produced in the Cairo suburb of Manshiyat Nasr earlier this year. “

read more

100 Women 2016: Female Arab cartoonists challenge authority

As part of the 100 Women season, the BBC asked three female cartoonists from North Africa to take up their pens and illustrate how the custom continues to affect women’s lives in their countries.

read more

Young heritage enthusiasts give Port Said’s Cinema Rio a make-over

“the energetic local heritage initiative Port Said Ala Adeemo steps in: Its members have been voluntarily doing some renovations at the cinema — fixing the A/C units, repairing some of the chairs, cleaning up — with limited funds, in order to reopen it to the public for three days this weekend. But this time it will screen neither Soviet, American nor Egyptian commercial productions, but films provided by Cairo’s art-house cinema Zawya.”

read more

Port Said’s Boulevard cultural center raided, shut down by authorities

“One of Port Said’s main independent cultural centers was raided and closed on Tuesday by members of the Sharq municipality, Sharq Police Station and the public facilities police department. According to the municipality’s official Facebook page, the center is an “unlicensed apartment ran as a center [for private lessons] without permits.”

read more

The Space of Revolt: An Investigation into the Urban Geography of the Arab Spring

“The first major issue on which the book is based is that addressing the political event indirectly–here, through its effects on the urban space–is productive. On the one hand, it frees us to a large extent from the chronology of political upheavals, which can often be confusing, and hence allows us to avoid the problem of factual history, as highlighted by Catusse, Signoles and Siino (2015). On the other hand, approaching the event via the urban space can create a narrative from a different angle, showing how the event is experienced at micro-scales, looking not only at the changes, but also the continuities in daily life, observing whether socio-spatial structures change or not, etc. “

read more

Cairo’s leading Townhouse Gallery officially reopens in converted paper factory

Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery officially reopened at the end of September with an exhibition of photographs documenting the city by the locally based artist Bryony Dunne. The non-profit organisation is now holding all exhibitions in a new gallery in its Factory space–a converted paper factory that also hosts film screenings and workshops.

read more

Indie and Alternative Music Production in the Arab World

Different interview where music is the centre topic, discussed by Huda Asfour from el Wad3/Status who hosts two of the most prominent Arab artists; Khayam Allami and Kinda Hassan.

The interview includes personal testimonies by the two artists on the status of the alternative music production in the Arab world and its most prominent actors and influencers! The interview has some very nice tracks and music about which they talk!

read more

Slums, gated communities and public space

On global cultural policies and the architectural stalemate in Egypt

read more

المغمورون في الراب المصري

ألغت التكنولوجيا الحاجز المباشر بين المستمع والموسيقى. كل شيءٍ متاح على الانترنت ووسائل التواصل الاجتماعي، والتي قدمت فرصةً مهمةً للموسيقيين المستقلين المغمورين لإيصال صوتهم، إلا أن الحاجز الذي ألغته التكنولوجيا لم يكن الوحيد بين المغمورين وجمهورهم المفقود، حيث يقف الذوق الموسيقي السائد حاجزاً ثانياً. يبقى معظم المستمعون أولياءً لذائقتهم الموسيقية التقليدية التي تشكلت تلقائياً، أو شكّلها المجتمع بالنيابة عنهم، ما يمنع هؤلاء المستمعين من البحث عمَّا هو جديد أو إعطاء الفرصة لما هو مغمور.

في الراب على وجه الخصوص، لا تحرم هذه المشكلة الرابرز المغمورين من الوصول إلى قاعدة جماهيرية أكبر وحسب، بل قد تؤدي إلى فقدانهم الأمل وربما اعتزالهم الموسيقى رغم أن أعمالهم قد تكون ذات قيمة فنية عالية. تسعى سلسلة المقالات هذه إلى تسليط الضوء على رابرز غير معروفين يستحقون المزيد من الاهتمام.

read more

WHEN GRAFFITI MATTERS THE MOST : MIDDLE EAST GRAFFITI

It is not about the already created and warped discourses, it is about the people who can change how stories about them are being told. This is not a story of a complex political and cultural region but, rather, a story on people who are working in an effort to change their reality. These people do not use smuggled weapons or thread on the fragility of human life with no concern for its value whatsoever. No, these are the people whose rapport with beauty extends beyond simple aesthetics. They create in order to resist, rather than resist in order to destroy…

read more

Pokémon Go and the politics of digital gaming in public

The handwringing that has always followed Pokémon’s popularity to claim it is essentially cutesy cockfighting has always missed the point that it was never really about fighting at all; that was nothing but a pretence for collecting, exploring, and discovering a grand, old, pre-urbanised world that a young kid could adventure through all by themselves.

read more

جدارية للتوعية بمخاطر تغير المناخ

وقفوا أمام أحد الجدران بمنطقة الخليفة، كل منهم أمسك فرشاة وعلبة ألوان وبدأوا فى رسم الجدارية التى اتفقوا عليها حول التغير المناخى، والتى شاركهم فيها أطفال وشباب الحى، جاء ذلك ضمن ورشة «جرافيتى من أجل المناخ»، التى تم تنظيمها مؤخراً من قبل مؤسسة «350 مصر» بالتعاون مع جمعية الفكر العمرانى «مجاورة»، بهدف استخدام وسائل مبتكرة مثل الفن فى التوعية بمخاطر التغير المناخى الذى تعانى منه مصر والعالم العربى.

read more

One story, many faces: How Egypt’s political TV is shaping public opinion

read more

Urban gamification: can Pokémon Go transform our public spaces?

Rana Abboud notes that Pokéstops and Pokégyms – strategic in-game locations, often attached to real-life city landmarks – have caused some public spaces to be flooded with crowds of players. But this isn’t always a good thing, she suggests, citing the recent water-bombings of gamers and subsequent police presence at a Pokéstop intersection in the Sydney suburb of Rhodes.

read more

Street Art Revisited

I say this not to attempt to validate or legitimate Street Art, something that it no longer needs anyone to do. Rather my claim of periodicity aims to make clear the radical divergence between what is widely understood as Street Art today and what was understood as Street Art in its infancy. Ultimately, and perhaps initially paradoxically, it aims to move us past this now misleading term, to lay the body of Street Art to rest and give life (or rather, give name) to the body of another, a practice I call Intermural Art.

read more

Understanding Arab Comics

read more

ISLAM CHIPSY AND THE BATTLE FOR EGYPT’S MUSICAL IDENTITY

Shaabi’s story has yet to be written, and whether the genre develops into a cultural movement denoting socio-political commentary remains to be seen. It hinges upon its performers’ ability to evolve musically.

read more

The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians: ‘When there is violence, you have to make music’

“Music, these days, is like a painkiller,”

read more

THE EGYPTIAN SATIRIST WHO INSPIRED A REVOLUTION

A cartoon from the May 30, 1879, issue of the newspaper Abou Naddara shows Egypt’s leader auctioning off the Giza Pyramids to a crowd of foreign buyers.

read more

Middle Eastern Writers Find Refuge in the Dystopian Novel

Five years after the popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere, a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root in the region. Some writers are using science fiction and fantasy tropes to describe grim current political realities. Others are writing about controversial subjects like sexuality and atheism, or exhuming painful historical episodes that were previously off limits.

read more

الحركة الاحتجاجية في المغرب

read more

The street artist who made the Louvre pyramid disappear

JR’s photographic conjuring trick with the Louvre pyramid has been delighting tourists in Paris for a couple of days.

read more

How edgy is the Arabic comics scene at the moment?

Guyer and Ganzeer talk about the boom in Egyptian comics publishing in the last five to ten years, from the publication of Metro (2008) to everything happening now on the widely varied scene. They also discussed other comics and graphic-novelling hotspots, including Beirut, Tunis, Casablanca, and beyond.

read more

Wall Street Art Show Canceled

A huge installation planned to take over 23 Wall Street, the onetime headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Co., has been canceled after months of struggles with funding.

read more

MARVEL AT THIS: CAIRO’S COOL COMICBOOK SCENE

read more

WORKSHOP BY DR. FADMA AITMOUS IN CAIRO ON QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

The first day of the workshop started with the introductory session in which prof. Randa Aboubakr; head of Egyptian team, introduced Dr. Fadma AitMous. then Dr. Fadma introduced the topic of the workshop and how the work frame of the project ‘spaces of participation’. the 1st session of the day was about the qualitative and […]

read more

From tok toks to TV: New film gets to the heart of mahraganat

‘Underground/On the Surface’

Mada Masr, Thursday, March 20, 2014

by Maha ElNabawi

“We have four social segments in Egypt: the poorer than poor, the poor, the middle class and the upper class,” says Ortega from the back of a car in Cairo. “We are happy to be part of the poorer than poor, but we do and sing as we want.”

The camera cuts to his bandmate Okka.

read more

Workshop by Anne Grune on Research in Media and Communication

Dr. Anne Grune, researcher and lecturer of Comparative Cultural and Media Studies at Erfurt University in Germany gave a 3-day workshop on research in media and communication to the junior researchers at the Spaces of Participation Program. Special thanks to the Women and Memory Forum in Egypt for hosting this event between March 2nd to […]

read more

Workshop by Azzurra Sarnataro on Research Methodologies in the Social Sciences

Between February 21st to 23rd, Azzurra Sarnataro, PhD researcher at La Sapienza University of Rome gave a workshop titled “Methodologies of Research in the Social Sciences”. The workshop was hosted by the British Council in Egypt and was given to junior researchers in the Spaces of Participation Program as well as other interested researchers. The […]

read more

“Geographies of Negligence: Neighborhood Cultures, Popular Activism and Citizenship in the Arab Region” Workshop

The first workshop organized by Forum for the Study of Popular Culture (FSPC) was held between May 10th-11th 2014. The workshop focused on Egypt and the Arab region, exploring the conflict between state/official institutions and emerging new actors who seek to disrupt established social and political hierarchies. The keynote speech was delivered by Tariq Ali, […]

read more

“Popular Culture and Resistance in the Middle East” Workshop, Marburg, Germany

Several members of our team participated in the international workshop “Popular Culture and Resistance in the Middle East” organised by Centre for Near-and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Marburg- Germany (December 6-7, 2103). The workshop explored contesting conceptions of ‘popular culture’ as well as strategies and methodologies derived from various disciplines such as sociology, […]

read more

Collaboration with Citizen Academia Network (CAN) UK

Date: October 6, 2013 We have started collaboration with Citizen Academia Network (CAN) UK, which is part of Research Council UK’s project: Global Uncertainties: Security for all in a Changing World. Particularly within this framework, we are collaborating with the programme “Imagining the Common Ground” coordinated by Dr. Caroline Rooney of the University of Kent […]

read more

New Directions of Internet Activism in Egypt

Click to see more about publication

read more

Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

Click to see more about publication

read more

Middle East Topics and Arguments (META Journal)

Click to see more about publication.

read more

Popular Protest Music and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

“Popular Protest Music and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution” by Anastasia Valassopoulos & Dalia Said Mostafa was published in the Popular Music and Society journal, 2014. Click to see more about publication.

read more

Comics and Media: A Special Issue of Critical Inquiry

The past decade has seen the medium of comics reach unprecedented heights of critical acclaim and commercial success. Comics & Media reflects that, bringing together an amazing array of contributors–creators and critics alike–to discuss the state, future, and potential of the medium…more.

read more

Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and Beyond

In “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and Beyond: The Politics of Art, Aesthetics, and Affect,” Sophie Richter-Devroe and Ruba Salih introduce the imperatives, questions, and ideas that inspired the special issue we are featuring here…more.

read more

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication

Special issue: Youth, Media and the Politics of Change in North Africa Negotiating Identities, Spaces and Power, 2013. Click here for more.

read more

Reinventing Emancipation in the 21st Century: The Pedagogical Practices of Social Movements

Interface is a journal dedicated to social movements and is free for download on the internet. Click here to download journal or here to know more about it.

read more

Creative Refuge

Creative Refuge brings forward the experience of three workshops working with children at Beit Atfal Assomoud , Burj El Barajne Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. The publication is a research catalog of the collected children’s stories, dreams, play spaces, and related family histories as well as a research document of the social and spatial […]

read more

Crowds and Politics in North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya

A recently published book by Andrea Khalil drawing on crowd theory and the Arab Spring. Click here for more.

read more

Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings

“This book examines the decade long of protest movements which created the context for the January 2011 mass uprising. It tells the story of Egypt’s long revolutionary process by exploring its genealogy in the decade before 25 January 2011and tracing its development in the three years that have followed.” Click here for more.

read more

Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet

“An accessible guide to the enduring struggle between people and power in the digital age.” Click here for more.

read more

Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation

Popular culture and new media are deeply interwoven, yet they are often thought of as separate spheres. This book explores the material and everyday intersections between popular culture and new media. Click here for more.

read more

Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State

[Upcoming 2015] Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. Click here for more.  

read more

Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture

“This fascinating, timely, and important book on the connection between music and political activism among Muslim youth around the world looks at how hip-hop, jazz, and reggae, along with Andalusian and Gnawa music, have become a means of building community and expressing protest in the face of the West’s policies in the War on Terror.” […]

read more

الإفتراضي والمفترض: المثقفون والسياسة على الفيسبوك

“يتناول الكتاب الشأن الثقافي المصري وعلاقته بالسياسة في ظل وسائل التواصل الإجتماعي علي المواقع الإلكترونية ومن أهمها الفيس بوك بما لها تأثير كبير علي الثقافة والمثقفين وخصوصاً بعد الثورة المصرية وموجاتها المتتابعة”. اضغط هنا للمزيد

read more

War on Walls: Egypt’s Arab Spring Street Art

War on Walls is a collection of extraordinary street art, created in and around Cairo’s Tahrir Square during Egypt’s Arab Spring revolution. Click here for more.

read more

Our Urban Futures: Cairo from Below Ideas Competition

“This volume explores the ideas for urban transformation held by young professionals and urban advocates in Egypt. These pages document the process and ideas generated through Cairo from Below’s 2013 “Our Urban Futures” Ideas Competition.” Click here for more.

read more

Mining User Generated Content

“Originating from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and many other networking sites, the social media shared by users and the associated metadata are collectively known as user generated content (UGC). To analyze UGC and glean insight about user behavior, robust techniques are needed to tackle the huge amount of real-time, multimedia, and multilingual data.” Click […]

read more

Convergence Media History

“Convergence Media History explores the ways that digital convergence has radically changed the field of media history. Writing media history is no longer a matter of charting the historical development of an individual medium such as film or television. Instead, now that various media from blockbuster films to everyday computer use intersect regularly via convergence, […]

read more

Democracy’s Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring

“Did digital media really “cause” the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy’s fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world’s most entrenched dictators.” Click here for more.

read more

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media

“The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is the first comprehensive reference work to which teachers, students, and the curious can quickly turn for reliable information on the key terms and concepts of the field.” Click here for more.

read more

Egypt’s Desert Dreams

A rigorous and comprehensive examination of Egypt’s desert development over the past half-century, the first of its kind, by the author of Understanding Cairo. Click here for more.

read more

Practices of Looking An Introduction to Visual Culture

“Visual culture is central to how we communicate. Our lives are dominated by images and by visual technologies that allow for the local and global circulation of ideas, information, and politics.” Click here for more.

read more

Introducing the Creative Industries: From Theory to Practice

“Creativity used to be the difficult concept to define – now it has probably been overtaken by the concept ‘creative industries’. However, this text does a sterling job at identifying, outlining and defining the many elements that go to make up this booming sector of industry.” Click here for more.

read more

Informal Power in the Greater Middle East: Hidden Geographies

“This book aims to explore the ‘hidden geographies’ of power, i.e. the political dynamics developing inside, in parallel to, and beyond institutional forums; arguing that these hidden geographies play a crucial role, both in support of and in opposition to official power.” Click here for more.

read more

Popular Culture

“Popular culture is as debated as it is pervasive. It is pervasive in that the symbolic worlds in which we live and out of which we construct sense are in many different ways, understood as and within popular culture. It is debated that it has been polarized as a negative or positive counterpart to other […]

read more

Media and Society: Production, Content and Participation

“This book unpacks the role of the media in social, cultural and political contexts and encourages you to reflect on the power relationships that are formed as a result.” Click here for more.

read more

Rhetoric in Popular Culture

“Rhetoric in Popular Culture provides readers with in-depth insight into the techniques of rhetorical criticism to analyze the full spectrum of contemporary issues in popular culture.” Click here for more.

read more

Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World

“Whereas most studies of Islamism focus on politics and religious ideology, this book analyses the ways in which Islamism in the Arab world is defined, reflected, transmitted and contested in a variety of creative and other cultural forms.” Click here for more.

read more

Popular Culture, Religion and Society: A Social-Scientific Approach

“What happens when popular culture not only amuses, entertains, instructs and relaxes, but also impacts on social interactions and perception in the field of religion?” Click here for more.

read more

Hermeneutics, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere

“Alejandro offers a theoretical reflection on citizenship as a political category that could make possible a collective identity defined by the citizens’ interpretations of traditions and their participation in the public sphere as well as their construction of a hermeneutic historical consciousness.” Click here for more.

read more

Barbie Culture

“Some readings would see Barbie as reproducing ethnicity and gender in a particularly coarse and damaging way – a cultural icon of racism and sexism. Rogers develops a broader, more challenging picture.” Click here for more.

read more

Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage

“We – the users turned creators and distributors of content – are TIME’s Person of the Year 2006, and AdAge’s Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0. But beyond the hype, what’s really […]

read more

Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

“Visual culture is central to how we communicate. Our lives are dominated by images and by visual technologies that allow for the local and global circulation of ideas, information, and politics. In this increasingly visual world, how can we best decipher and understand the many ways that our everyday lives are organized around looking practices […]

read more

Modernizing Marriage Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt

“”Cuno makes a compelling case for a new narrative in Egyptian family history, one that links the fortunes of the family to the sweeping changes of the period and tells a nuanced story with full attention to the complexities of class difference, state interventions, and broad social change.” Click here for more.

read more

The Borders of Subculture: Resistance and the Mainstream

“This book aims to revisit the notion of subculture for the 21st century, reinterpreting it and extending its scope. On the one hand, the notion of resistance is redefined and applied to contemporary practices of cultural production and entrepreneurship.” Click here for more.

read more

Popular Music and Cultural Policy

“Popular music is increasingly visible in government strategies and policies. While much has been written about the expanding flow of music products and music creativity in emphasising the global nature of popular music, little attention has been paid to the flow of ideas about policy formation and debates between regions and nations.” Click here for […]

read more

Creative Economy and Culture: Challenges, Changes and Futures for the Creative Industries

“Creativity, new ideas and innovation – and with them the growth of knowledge – have spilled out of the lab, studio and factory into the street, scene, and social media. Now, everyday life is productive, everyone is creative, and new ideas can come from anywhere around the world.” Click here for more.

read more

The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music

“The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music is a comprehensive, smartly-conceived volume that can take its place as the new standard reference in popular music. The editors have shown great care in covering classic debates while moving the field into new, exciting areas of scholarship.” Click here for more.

read more

The Secular Religion of Fandom: Pop Culture Pilgrim

“Media pilgrimage has become a booming business in the 21st century. Fans of television shows, rock groups and books flock to places associated with their favorite series, artist or writer, trying to embody and perhaps understand what inspired the beloved piece of work, and, more importantly, to cobble together their own personal identity, seeking meaning […]

read more

Creating Comics as Journalism, Memoir and Nonfiction

“This book provides student journalists, artists, designers, creative writers and web producers with the tools and techniques they need to tell nonfiction stories visually and graphically.”

read more

The Making of English Popular Culture

“While a form of what we might describe as popular culture existed before this period, John Storey has assembled a collection that demonstrates how what we now think of as popular culture first emerged as a result of the enormous changes that accompanied the industrial revolution.” Click here for more.

read more

Play and Participation in Contemporary Arts Practices

“This book engages debates in current art criticism concerning the turn toward participatory works of art. In particular, it analyzes ludic participation, in which play and games are used organizationally so that participants actively engage with or complete the work of art through their play.” Click here for more.

read more

Citizen Media and Public Spaces

read more

The Good City

This paper outlines the elements of an urban ethic imagined as an ever-widening habit of solidarity built around different dimensions of the urban common weal. It offers a practical urban utopianism based around four registers of solidarity woven around the collective basics of everyday urban life. These are ‘repair’, ‘relatedness’, ‘rights’ and ‘re-enchantment’.

read more

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

In this special issue, we’re asking: What has happened in Canadian comics since 2000? Have the successes in the field—in creating, and in publishing—changed in the twenty-first century? How do Canadian comics suggest different ways of seeing the world beyond the traditions established elsewhere? How has the advent of the digital age affected the way comics are published, distributed, and consumed? In order to shift perspectives about Canadian comics, we seek contributions on works by Canadian artists who have made their debut since 2000.

read more

The Space of Revolt: An Investigation into the Urban Geography of the Arab Spring

“The first major issue on which the book is based is that addressing the political event indirectly–here, through its effects on the urban space–is productive. On the one hand, it frees us to a large extent from the chronology of political upheavals, which can often be confusing, and hence allows us to avoid the problem of factual history, as highlighted by Catusse, Signoles and Siino (2015). On the other hand, approaching the event via the urban space can create a narrative from a different angle, showing how the event is experienced at micro-scales, looking not only at the changes, but also the continuities in daily life, observing whether socio-spatial structures change or not, etc. “

read more

Beirut: Imagining the City

BOOK EXCERPT | Beirut: Past, Present, Future? Memory and Anxiety in Contemporary Lebanese Comics in Beirut, Imagining the City

read more

Planning Beirut during the French Mandate: The Construction of a Modern City and its Legacy

“…the book is a must-read for those interested in the key spatial transformations of Beirut during the first part of the twentieth century. It nicely complements and enriches earlier texts by integrating the French Mandate era (1920-1942) in the backdrop of late Ottoman rule, and the anticipation of independence.”

read more

The Humanities and Technology Camp

“THATCamp stands for ‘The Humanities and Technology Camp’. It is an unconference: an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.” What are the humanities? What is technology? Click here for this information and more. THATCamp Beirut, 2015    

7 March 2015 American University in Beirut

read more

Literature and Language of Resistance Symposium

Department of English Language and Literature, Cairo University – The Twelfth International Symposium on Comparative Literature (November 11th-13th, 2014). “Resistance manifests itself in everyday life, and is always triggered by oppression. Resistance can also be perceived as “an alternative way of conceiving human history” as Edward Said puts it. It takes various forms, challenging language, […]

13 November Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University

read more

Musiccult, 2015

Culture in general and its effects on music, composition and important turning points in the history of music has always been one of the major discussions of the music studies. Art institutions, economic status of the composer, the question of audience, financial support for music and censorship are some of the main subtopics of this […]

May 9, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey

read more

The Fifth International Conference on the Image

This interdisciplinary conference, and its companion journal, invites scholars, artists, educators, designers, historians, philosophers, and practitioners to examine the nature and functions of image-making and images.  Click here for more.

October 30, 2014 Berlin, Germany

read more

Hip Hop Workshop by Tahrir Lounge, Goethe

A workshop organized by Tahrir Lounge, Goethe and Asphalt band which aims to teach young people between the ages of 16-26 hip hop song writing and performance in and out of the studio and will teach them about the history of hip-hop too. For more, click here.

September 18 2014

read more

“Outa Hamra” (Red Tomato) New Season Opening

Outa Hamra, a street clowning initiative have announced the beginning of a new season through an upcoming event on Sept. 13th, calling it “A day of games for the children and a CLOWN SHOW for all audiences”. The troupe is interested in bringing performance to underprivileged places in Egypt. For more on Outa Hamra Street […]

13 September 2014 Ahmed Esmat Youth Center, Ain Shams, Cairo

read more

Tok Tok Magazine, 12

TokTok Magazine, an independent comic book releases it’s 12th issue. For more info on TokTok, click here and here. For more info on the event, click here.

Townhouse Gallery

read more

History in the Making: Arab Media and Processes of Remembering

A conference organised by the Arab Media Centre, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). For more information, click here.

24 April 2015 Westminster University

read more

Crowdfunding Graffiti Baladi

Crowdfunding for the production of a book and DVD on Egyptian graffiti. For more, click here (English and French).

read more

Second International Conference on Media and Popular culture

Second international conference on media and popular culture, organized by Center for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities and held in Vienna, Austria. For more information, click here.

24 May 2014

read more

NYC Urban Sustainability Happy Hour & Cairo From Below

“The NYC Urban Sustainability Happy Hour is holding a special event Thursday November 6th! This meet up will be held in conjunction with Cairo from Below in honor of the launch of a publication on their “Our Urban Futures – Ideas Competition” and announcement of the second ideas competition. Click here for more details.

read more

10 Balady Ard El Lewaa Festival

Artellewa, an art imitative serving the unofficial area of Ard El Lewa is holding a street festival. See this for more details.

2 November 2014

read more

International Conference of Critical Geography

The ICCG 2015 will be organized around nine main themes (see below) that connect to and expand the conference underlying subject, that is ‘Precarious Radicalism On Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility’. Click here for more.

30 July 2015 Ramallah, Palestine

read more

National Geographic Photo Camp: A Decade of Storytelling

“This eye-opening exhibition features images and personal accounts from all 67 Photo Camps from the busy urban centers of India, New York and Los Angeles, to remote villages in Uganda, and most recently South Sudan.” For more information on the event, click here.

Washington, DC

read more

“Cairo Past Futures”

“Cairo Past Futures,” a photographic exhibition by Mohamed Elshahed, will be held at Kafein from December 21 through the end of January. Click here for more.

31 January 2015

read more

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss Gallery at the Townhouse Gallery

Constructed over the past four years, this body of work uses found images as a basic alphabet that can be remixed in between digital and analogue planes of reality to create soft, hypnotic patterned surfaces. Paper collages, printed sheets of silk, GIFs and an animation offer different states of visual flatness — pure image surfaces […]

28 January 2015 Townhouse Gallery

read more

Istabl Antar Graffiti Workshop

“Istabl Antar Graffiti” workshop aims to increase the sense of belonging of the inhabitants in the area and changing the previous perception about the Ring Road wall as an ugly concrete dull object blocking the area into a beautiful and attractive place. Click here for more.

17 January 2015

read more

(ورشة عمل جديدة لمشروع كورال (الميوزيكال

حنتقابل يومين نغني بس من غير كلام – الورشة معتمدة على الارتجال و مفتوحة لجميع اللي حابّين يسجّلوا حضورهم .حنصور الورشة و نطلع بفيلم غنائي فيما بعد

read more

ARTIS@MANCHESTER Researhing Translation in the Context of Popular Culture: Theoritical and Methodological Perspectives.

ARTIS is having an event hosted by the University of Manchester this month and the topics evolve around popular culture and translation politics.
The event features the following speakers:
Dr Carol O’Sullivan (University of Bristol) Popular Culture and the Object of Study in Audiovisual Translation Studies
Dr Heather Inwood (University of Manchester) Transformative Work: New Participatory Culture from Audience Engagement to Fan Productivity
Dr Luis Perez-Gonzalez (University of Manchester) Investigating Digitally Born Translation Agencies in the Context of Popular Culture.
Professor Randa Abou-bakr (Cairo University) Mock Translation in the Blogosphere: The Creation of an Alternative Discourse.

13 February 2015 Kanaris Room, Manchester Museum, Manchester

read more

“Whatever happened to the Arab Uprisings? Four years after the revolutionary moment”

The workshop brings together international academics from political science, media studies and Middle East studies to discuss various aspects of Egypt’s transformation process, especially in regards to the media and political communication.

2 March 2015 The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, 1 Mahmoud Azmi Str., Zamalek, Cairo

read more

Abby Smith Rumsey: How Digital Memory is Shaping Our Future

What is the future of human memory? What will people know about us when we are gone? Come for a conversation with author Abby Smith Rumsey about her new book, When we are No More: How Digital Memory will Shape our Future.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/abby-smith-rumsey-how-digital-memory-is-shaping-our-future-tickets-22473471759

26/4/2016 San Francisco, CA

read more

Digital Activism and Civil Society in the Middle East

“The Media Project” at the Arab Studies Institute is pleased to announce its workshop on digital activism, civil society, and media in the Middle East. the second in a series of critical workshops, conferences, and events will be held in Beirut, Lebanon.

read more

Researching Citizen Media Workshop

An interdisciplinary workshop to be held at the University of Manchester, UK, on the 15th-16th September 2016.
“Conducting research in this fluid, fast changing and sometimes high risk environment poses numerous methodological and ethical challenges that are yet to be adequately explored. This event will offer a platform for discussing these challenges and sharing research experiences that involve different forms and platforms of citizen media.”

15/9/2016 - 16/9/2016 Conference Room (C1.18), Graduate School (Arts, Languages and Cultures) | Ellen Wilkinson Building, The University of Manchester | Oxford Road | Manchester M13 9PL.

read more

المؤتمر الثالث للمجلس العربي للعلوم الإجتماعيّة

يسرّ المجلس العربيّ للعلوم الإجتماعيّة الإعلان عن مؤتمره الثالث بعنوان “الدّولة والسّيادة والفضاء الإجتماعيّ في المنطقة العربيّة: قراءاتٌ تاريخيّةٌ ومُقارباتٌ نظريّةٌ جديدةٌ”، والذي يُعقد في العاصمة اللبنانيّة بيروت من 10-12 آذار/ مارس من العام 2017.

12/3/2017 Beirut

read more

Conference ” A New Wave of Populism in Europe and the Arab World: Implications and Consequences for Civic Institutions “

5 October 2016 Germany

read more

Call for Papers & Multimedia Contributions

Themes:
Migration Brokerage, Debt and Precarious Employment
Differentiated Niches in Migrant Labour Markets
Policy Processes and Politics in Migration
Remittances, Remittance Behaviour and Poverty Outcomes
Youth and Migration
Return and Reintegration, Gender Identities and Livelihoods
Migration and Social Networks
Social Policy for Migrants
Migration, Urbanisation and Climate Change
The Migration Crisis
Migrant Journey
Migrant Organizations and Activism

Wed 29 March, 2017 London

read more

Call for Conference Papers: Rethinking Media Through the Middle East

Within the field of media studies, Middle Eastern media is often treated as a domain of interest only to area specialists. As Edward Said argued in Orientalism, the region popularly known as the Middle East is not peripheral but integral to European history, culture, and civilization. This subversive insight, however, has largely been treated as secondary to foundational claims in media theory. If knowledge about Middle Eastern media usually serves only to supplement dominant frameworks and paradigms, we are interested in thinking about the ways it can instead extend, qualify, or even explode them.
‘Rethinking Media Through the Middle East’ aims to create an interdisciplinary conversation to challenge this deficit. Taking a broad view of the Middle East that incorporates the Arabic-speaking world, Turkey, Iran, and various ethnic minority groups, this conference asks how the Middle East might serve to disrupt, interrupt, subvert, challenge, or transform our understanding of what media are and do. We are especially interested in papers that shift our focus to south-south comparisons and relationships or that challenge how we theorize US and European media. This conference aims to explore the study of media as an independent field, but one that interconnects, influences, and is influenced by other intellectual formations and traditions.

The following is a partial list of topics that papers might explore in relation to the conference theme:

Media and Political theory
-mediated populism
-charisma and authority
-critical perspectives on humanitarianism
-biopolitics, sovereignty, and governmentality
-queer theory and the state

Colonialism, imperialism, and historicizing global media
-early cinema
-transnational circulation before neoliberalism
-MidEast wars and news media
-postcolonial theory, decolonial theory, and critical race theory
-diasporic, migrant, and refugee communities

Area studies, and media and communication studies
-area studies and the history of the social sciences
-contemporary debates in social and cultural theory

Research methodologies
-activist research
-feminist methodologies
-archival access
-language and fieldwork

Questions of materiality
-political economy, liberalization, and the state
-global infrastructures and the Middle East
-media archaeology beyond the study of design and invention
-economies of repair and breakdown
-affect, the senses, and technology

Other topics
-legacies of post-structuralism
-war, cultural memory, and the archive
-digital media and sexual cultures
-media studies futures

13 January 2017

read more

قصص من الشارع – كوميكس مع كلايست

في اطار أسبوع الكوميكس لهذا العام تدعو مكتبة معهد جوته فنان الكوميكس و كاتب رواية الجرافيك “حلم الأوليمبية” راينهارد كلايست. في بداية الأسبوع يقدم معهد جوته بالاشتراك مع كلية الفنون الجميلة، جامعة الاسكندرية ورشة عمل بعنوان “قصص من الشارع” لفناني الكوميكس المصريين من الشباب.
و تعد هذه أول زيارة لكلايست لمدينة الاسكندرية و أول ورشة عمل له بمصر. تتلو ورشة العمل فعاليات أخرى مع كلايست في القاهرة و الاسكندرية تمتد لبداية شهر أكتوبر.

25 - 29/09/2016 Goethe - Alexandria

read more

Call for proposals for artist-led conference on social practice (Chicago)

Open Engagement 2017 — JUSTICE will take place April 21–23, 2017 at the Chicago Cultural Center and a constellation of sites across the city. This year’s conference, guided by the curatorial vision of Romi Crawford and Lisa Lee, will explore the centralized theme of Justice, and will feature presenters including Theaster Gates, Maria Gaspar, Maria Varela, and Laurie Jo Reynolds.

21-23 April 2016

read more

PhotoCairo6 Workshop Series A performance + debate working group

Through “a performance and debate”, we will create a space to discuss concepts related to art, society and the public sphere. Participants will collectively challenge, debate and examine questions related to the context(s) of artistic practice and the responsibilities of the artist vis-a-vis her/his surrounding environment.

Passing by art in academic contexts, to art as part of knowledge exchange, art in public spaces (outside of conventional gallery walls) and models of artistic practices that emphasize public participation and collaborative production we will unpack the many ways through which a relationship between art and the public sphere could be conceived.

3/12/2016 CiC - Cairo

read more

ZARAEEB EL SEED

“ArtTalks is delighted to present Zaraeeb, the first solo exhibit in Egypt by internationally acclaimed French-Tunisian artist, eL Seed.

Zaraeeb, comprised of 16 individual artworks and largely made up of zoomed-in fragments of his intricate style, is a continuation of eL Seed’s internationally renowned work, Perception, produced in the Cairo suburb of Manshiyat Nasr earlier this year. “

10 Jan 2016 Art Talks Cairo

read more

Personalised Media and Participatory Culture (Project Conference)

“During the conference we will present the findings of our project that concentrated on participatory networks and media in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and UAE. Through mapping the field of youth participation textually and analytically, and through interviews with young people, experts and stakeholders, the research presents a wide and different range of forms of social and political participation of youth in the MENA region. We suggest factors that can explain how young people decide to participate in their communities. Our research evaluates and theorises young people’s civic engagement and public participation not only in the narrow domain of institutional politics, but in a broader sense that encompasses artistic and cultural consumption, cultural remixing and the production of popular culture as an emerging civic participatory culture.”

29-30/06/2017

read more

CALL FOR PAPERS – the 8th International Conference on Popular Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa: Popular Culture between Site and Flow

We invite papers that investigate these questions and related ones – research that may address the following aspects of cinema, film, street theatre, comedy, poetry, press, digital media, dance, games, folklore, music, storytelling, and television of the MENA region and its diasporas:

? MENA cultural influences in the Caucasus and cultural influences from the Caucasus in the MENA;
? Cultural production on the move;
? Travelling troupes, performers, products; notions of transnational popularity and consumption;
? Popular culture in translation;
? Globalization and adaptation;
? Authenticity and tradition in the face of cultural exchange;
? Transnational and interregional networks (satellite media, social media, activism, among others);
? Popular/cultural hubs and horizons; soundscapes, “food”scapes
? Diasporic audiences; migrant consumers; refugee producers (and variations within);
? Affective flows within MENA cultural production;
? Spatial dynamics of MENA cultural production;
? “Flows” of cognition in pop cultural consumption;
? Performative “flow” as experience by popular MENA singers, performers, storytellers;
? “Sites” of cultural production/struggle/resistance;
? Pop-cultural sedimentation and fixing.
Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words in English to menapoptbilisi@gmail.com by 1 March 2017. Authors of successful abstracts will be notified by 1 April. We welcome presentations based on research in any of the diverse languages of the MENA, but please note that due to technical limitations, the sole language of the conference will be English. Only abstracts in English will be considered. Inquiries welcomed at the address above.

28-30 September 2017 Tbilisi, Georgia

read more

Call For Papers: Documenting Trauma: Comics and the Politics of Memory Symposium

“The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), which offers the city’s humanities scholars to collaborate with researchers across other disciplines, and institutions, has issued a Call For Papers for a day-long symposium to be hosting here in Oxford on 22nd June 2017. (The institute also runs a number of comic events through the year).”

24/06/2017 Oxford

read more

Landscapes that Remain

Callout for Photo Essays and Articles LANDSCAPES THAT REMAIN TRACING RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE ARAB WORLD Deadline 1 June 2017

01/06/2017

read more

Conference Paper and Photo Essay at Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia, June09-12, 2017

This conference seeks to illuminate and explore research and expressions of human mobility especially as related to cultural and social aspects. Papers pertaining to human mobility, refugee assistance, heritage formation and preservation (i.e., of both new and existing residents), social cohesion, borderlands issues, historical transformation and maintenance of social space, new community formation and other […]

9-12 June 2017

read more

The Second 3rd Space Symposium: Decolonising Art Institutions

“… The Institute for Creative Arts’ 3rd Space Symposium is an interdisciplinary event that explores ideas around the imperative to decolonise the university, the role of the creative arts in provoking change, and the dialectic between the settled nature of academic curricula and the spontaneity of transformation.”

20/04/2017

read more

Reminder – Landscapes that Remain

Callout for Photo Essays and Articles LANDSCAPES THAT REMAIN TRACING RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE ARAB WORLD Deadline 1 June 2017

01/06/2017

read more

“The Spatial Turn in Questions of Justice”

read more

CALL FOR PAPERS! “Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es: Movement, Space, and Religious Difference”

Movement and urban transformation have been at the center of multiple histories of displacement (the Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugee crises) that have produced the present situations in the contemporary Middle East. Alongside these histories are realities of religious difference, intersecting religious identity with national tendencies (e.g., Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria), wherein Sunni/Shi’a relations, […]

December 2017

read more

Reminder: Call Out For Submission – Landscapes that Remain

A Collection of Articles and Photo Essays Tracing Reconfigurations of the Arab World. “Landscape is a vigorous agent in people’s lives. It is what enables them to form meaningful constructions of self in relation to their surroundings. But fragile and precarious nation states are sites for continuous oppression, violence and imperial wars. Processes of corruption, […]

30th July 2017

read more

Call for Submissions: Politics and Pop Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

20Aug17

read more