Christa Salamandra is Christa Salamandra is Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Director of the MA Program in Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Center. Her work explores visual, mediated, and urban culture in Syria and the Middle East. She is the author of A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (Indiana University Press, 2004), co-editor of Syria from Reform to Revolt (with Leif Stenberg, Syracuse University Press, 2015), and co-editor of Middle Eastern Drama: Politics Aesthetics, Practices (with Nour Halabi, Routledge, 2023). Her forthcoming book, Waiting for Light: Syrian Television Drama Production in the Satellite draws on extensive fieldwork in Syria, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates.
Nour Halabi is an Interdisciplinary Fellow/Assistant Professor at the University of Aberdeen. She is the Vice-Chair of the Race Network of the Media Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) and the Secretary of the Ethnicity and Race Division in the International Communication Association. Her interdisciplinary research examines the interactions between mobility, social movements, and global media and discourse. She is author of Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration (Rutgers University Press, 2022), which won the MeCCSA Outstanding Achievement Award: Monograph of the Year, 2023, co-editor of Middle Eastern Television Drama: Politics, Aesthetics, Practices (with Christa Salamandra, Routledge 2023), and co-editor of Discourses in Action (with Klaus Krippendorff, Routledge, 2020). Her research also appears in Middle East Critique, Space and Culture, International Journal of Communication, and other academic journals. She received her doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, her MA from the London School of Economics, and her BA from Paris (IV) Sorbonne.
