Conference – Page 2 – Institute for Middle East Studies

Omar Al-Ghazzi

IMESFebruary 24, 2021March 12, 2021

The Temporal Middle East

Panel 1: Regional Formations and the Nation

This paper takes a historic overview of temporality, defined as the social & political experience of time, as an object of study in Western-based scholarship on the Arabic-speaking Middle East. It starts with discussing how postcolonial approaches to temporality have dominated Arab studies on collective memory as resistance, the role of the state in history writing, and the study of collective movements. I argue that an enduring source of tension within conceptualising temporality can be described as a temporal double consciousness that cannot recognize the self without invoking the West. A recent manifestation of this, I suggest, is expressed through scholarly anxiety around the politics of naming the region. I then move on to think about the place of media and communication studies in relation to the temporal. I conclude with identifying future directions and gaps in the literature in thinking of the temporal Middle East, particularly from the perspective of media and communication studies.

Dr. Omar Al-Ghazzi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research expertise is in the reporting and representation of conflict, digital journalism and the politics of time and memory— with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Dr Al-Ghazzi completed his PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication, the University of Pennsylvania. He holds MAs in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and American University and a BA in Communication Arts from the Lebanese American University. His research has appeared in the field of communication’s top journals including Communication Theory, Journalism and the International Journal of Communication.

2021 Annual Conference Moderators

IMESFebruary 22, 2021March 2, 2021

Will Youmans

Panel 1: Regional Formations and the Nation

William Youmans is an Associate Professor at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. Broadly interested in questions of transnationalism, power and communication, his primary research interests include global news, law and politics. His other areas of interest include researching terrorism, American international broadcasting, Middle East politics and Arab-American studies.

Hatim el-Hibri

Panel 2: State Policy, Industries and Media Landscapes

Hatim El-Hibri is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University. His research and teaching interests focus on global and transnational media, visual culture, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban space, and media technology. His first book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure, will be available from Duke University Press in June 2021.

Melani McAlister

Panel 3: Mediating the Sacred

Melani McAlister is Professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University. A cultural historian focused on the US in the world, she has recently published The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (Oxford, 2018). She is also co-editor of volume 4 of the forthcoming Cambridge History of America and the World. Her other books include Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East (Univ. of California, 2005, o. 2001) and the forthcoming co-edited volume, Global Faith, Worldly Power.

Elliott Colla

Panel 4: The Politics of the Popular

Elliott Colla is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is author of Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity, and essays on modern Arab literature, culture and politics. He has translated works of contemporary Arabic literature, including Ibrahim Aslan’s novel, The Heron, Idris Ali's Poor, Ibrahim al-Koni's Gold Dust, and Rab‘i al-Madhoun's The Lady from Tel Aviv. The television adaptation of his 2014 novel, Baghdad Central, is streaming on Hulu.

Narges Bajoghli

IMESOctober 20, 2020March 12, 2021

The Production of Iran as a Regional Power

Panel 1: Regional Formations and the Nation

*Poster for the Iranian TV series Agha'zadeh*

Poster for the Israeli TV series Tehran about the Israeli–Iranian conflict. — *Poster for the Israeli TV series Tehran*

But their work does not exist in a vacuum—they act and react to the “maximum pressure” campaign from the Trump administration, as well as campaigns backed by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, which all play out largely in the digital world. In this political and digital environment, Iran’s IRGC media producers must not only persuade a domestic audience of its wars abroad through messages heavy in nationalism; but it must also attempt to counter strong campaigns of regional and international pressure. This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork with cultural producers of the IRGC over a ten-year period.

The media producers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have spent the past decade building new strategies to garner support for the revolutionary state. Integral to these efforts is a strategy of dissimulation—in other words, making media that audiences would consume without realizing it was produced by the state. In the new media environment, digital technologies have allowed these state producers to create “independent” internet television channels; produce viral videos under the auspices of “citizen journalism”; and launch vast Instagram campaigns with nationalistic messages about Iran’s military role in Syria.

*Poster for the Iranian TV series Gando*

Dr. Narges Bajoghli is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. She is an award-winning anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer. Professor Bajoghli’s academic research is at the intersections of media and power. Her first project focused on regime cultural producers in Iran, and was based on ethnographic research with Basij, Ansar-e Hezbollah, and Revolutionary Guard media producers. The resulting book, "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" (Stanford University Press 2019) was awarded the 2020 Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology.