Any attempt to write an account of popular culture in the Middle East must face the question of how to define Arab and the Arabs? This might seem an odd statement at first glance: some 350 million people speak the language, ergo they are Arabs, and Arab, the Arabs, the …

Issue 23, winter/spring 2017 https://doi.org/10.70090/MMK17POP 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 …

Issue 23, winter/spring 2017 https://doi.org/10.70090/HA17PCME On November 21, 2016, the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, Oxford hosted the roundtable and launch of Public Culture and Islam in Modern Egypt: Media, Intellectuals and Society (London: I.B.Tauris, 2016) with myself and Morgan Clarke (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford) …

Issue 23, winter/spring 2017 https://doi.org/10.70090/RARB17RA 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 …

Issue 23, winter/spring 2017 https://doi.org/10.70090/MAF177SP Mention art, culture, and creativity and you’ve got Kuwait-based Nuqat’s seventh conference boosting innovation, promoting entrepreneurship, uncovering censorship, and serving as a teaching platform.  This year’s three-day conference entitled “The Seventh Sense: Powering the Creative Economy,” delved into the capacity of the brain to come up …

Arab Media & Society the journal of the Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism in The School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo organized a one-day conference on “Media and Culture” on November 9, 2016. The event was held at the University’s …

August 22, 2016—In honor of the closing ceremonies of the 2016 Olympic Games yesterday, we are revisiting Tunisia’s good and bad moments. Tunisia’s star-struck media veered dramatically to re-center the spotlight on three unlikely bronze medalists, whose groundbreaking performances outshone national heroes.

August 15, 2016—Activists expressed anger on social media today in response to stickers spread throughout Tripoli slandering Libya's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Sadiq al-Gharyani. The stickers appeared under the cover of dark late last night. Posts defending the Mufti flooded Facebook with the hashtag "Sheikh Sadiq Al-Gharyani represents me."

August 4, 2016—Morocco’s National Society of Radio and Television (SNRT) will publicly broadcast the 2016 Olympic Games from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

July 31, 2016—Friction between passionate football supporters and their depiction in sports media has developed over the past few years. Ultras Ahlawy, the Egyptian organization under which the fans gather, is at the epicenter of violence and anti-government conspiracy theories.