Synopses & Reviews
Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Fieldis the first attempt to explore ways of conceptualizing and theorizing the nascent field of Arab Cultural Studies. It reflects and engages in an interdisciplinary discussion on the different facets of Arab cultural studies, including gender, economy, history, epistemology, language, method, politics, literary and cultural criticism, institutionalization, popular culture, creativity and much more.
The book presents a meta-narrative about how scholars have thus far thought and re-thought the field. It brings together prominent and emerging experts, writing from both Arab and Western academia, to engage with key complex, epistemic and methodological questions and to articulate in the meantime the new kinds of language and hermeneutics necessary for the appropriation of an historically conscious and coherent field of scientific enquiry into contemporary Arab media, culture and society.
About the Author
Tarik Sabry is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Theory at the University of Westminster. He is the author ofCultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media, the Modern and the Everyday(I.B.Tauris, 2010) and is co-editor if theMiddle East Journal of Culture and Communication.
Table of Contents
Introduction * Cultural Criticism: Theory and Method * The Saudi Modernity Wars According To 'Abdullah Al-Ghadhami: A Template for the Study of Arab Culture and Media * Arab Media Studies between the Legacy of a Thin Discipline and the Promise of New Cultural Pathways * Cultural Studies in Arab World Academic Communication Programmes * The Battle for Survival * In search of the Great Absent: Cultural Studies in Arab Universities * Resources, Creativity and Arab culture: Insights from a Political Economy Approach * Language as culture: The question of Arabic * Rethinking the Arab State and Culture: Power, discourse and media in contemporary Syria * The Necessary Politics of Palestinian Cultural Studies * Rethinking Gender Studies in the Arab World: A Conceptual Intervention * Disarticulating Arab Popular Culture: The Case of Egyptian Comedies * Internationalizing a Media Studies degree in Arab Higher Education: A case study arising from an agreement between New Zealand and Oman * Arab cultural studies: between re-territorialization and de-territorialization * Notes * Index