The popular rebellions that have swept Arab countries since December 2010 have spawned an active field of revolutionary cultural production. Scholars from around the world will gather at the Annenberg School for Communication`s The Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication`s (PARGC) inaugural symposium. Putting primary sources in dialogue with theory, we seek to understand aesthetic experimentation and stylistic innovation in this revolutionary public sphere. Together, we will strive to shed light on the ways in which various revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activists and regimes have attracted, upheld, and directed popular attention to themselves and to their opponents, created and mobilized publics, stirred and channeled affects. Our exploration of contention, communication, and culture in the Arab uprisings will yield conceptual tools to understand revolutionary public spheres at large.
THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014
8:40 – 8:45 am: Welcome
Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean, ASC
8:45 – 9:00 am: Symposium Introduction
Marwan M. Kraidy, Director, PARGC
9:00 – 10:30 am: Music, Memory, Contention
Yakein Abdelmagid: Precarious Improvisations: The mediations and circulations of alternative music production
Omar Al-Ghazzi: Haunted by anticolonial memories: Omar al-Mukhtar in the Libyan 2011 uprising
Nouri Gana: Venting Still: Tunisian Rap Music before and after the Revolution
Shayna Silverstein: Creative Flow: Music, Genre and Mobility in the Syrian Revolutionary Public Sphere
Chair: William Lafi Youmans
10:45 am – 12:15 pm: Power, Performance, Violence
Walter Armbrust: Beards and Uniforms: Political Bricolage and the Egyptian Revolution
Tarek El-Ariss: The Dark Side of the Arab Spring: Literature, Violence, and the Virtual
Leila Tayeb: Shahi al-Huriya: Militant Optimism and Freedom Tea
Edward Ziter: Syria’s Anecdotal Theatre
Chair: Christa Salamandra
1:15 – 2:45 pm: Images, Inscription, Space
Anahi Alviso-Marino: Contentious politics and collective action through street art in Yemen (2011-2013)
Nour Halabi: Hezbollah Logos and their Parodies: A study of cultural production and carnivalesque humor in revolutionary times
Adel Iskandar: The Politics of Memes: Irreverence, Intertextuality, and Irony in Revolutionary Egypt
Amal Khalaf: Reclaiming Bahrain
Chair: John Downing
3:00 – 4:15 pm: Memes, Screens, Networks
Donatella Della Rata: “I am with the law” but “I am not stupid!” Memes, resistance and the politics of cultural (re)production in Syria`s uprising
Marc Owen Jones: Satire, Social Media and Revolutionary Cultural Production in the Bahrain Uprising: From a Genre of Utopian Fiction to Political Satire
Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen: Media Controversies and the Cultural Policies of the Morsi Government
Chair: Guobin Yang
4:15 - 5:15 pm: Concluding Discussion
5:30 - 7:30 pm: Closing Reception
The Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication (PARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania promotes theoretical and empirical innovation in the study of global communication in public life.
[Logo Design by Ute Kraidy]