Join the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) for its Dialogues Series, an annual webinar that brings together scholars and practitioners from across varied disciplines for a discussion of critical contemporary issues that interrogate the boundaries between architecture, art, anthropology,
archaeology, and history. In this session, “Forms of Protest: Political Art in the Digital and Urban Realm,” series host, Eliana Abu-Hamdi is joined by Middle East Scholars Jillian Schwedler, Deen Sharp and Kyle Craig for a virtual discussion (via Zoom) on the intersections of art, urban politics and protest in the
Middle East (broadly defined) in the form of public display of sculpture and art (graffiti), especially as is related to issues of displacement, dispossession, diaspora and national identities. The conversation also extends to digital media and hashtag culture/activism and virtual identities.
Date and Time: Monday, February 6, 2023, 11:00am-12:30 pm US EST
Register in advance for this session here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the session.
A recording of the event will be posted on the IJIA website and Facebook page. The discussion will also appear in print as part of the journal’s new “Dialogues” section. For any questions, please contact ijia@intellectbooks.com.
ABOUT THE DISCUSSANTS
Jillian Schwedler is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and the Graduate Center and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Crown Center at Brandeis University. From August 2022 through January 2023, she will be Distinguished CUNY Scholar at the Advanced Research
Collaborative at the Graduate Center. She is member of the editorial committee for Middle East Law and Governance (MELG) and for many years was member of the Board of Directors and the Editorial Committee of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), publishers of the quarterly
Middle East Report. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America and is currently on the governing Council of the American Political Science Association (APSA). During the Spring 2020 semester, she was Visiting Professor and Senior
Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Global and International Studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Schwedler’s most recent book is Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent, published by Stanford University Press in 2022.
Deen Sharp, PhD CUNY, is a Visiting LSE Fellow in Human Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the Geography and Environment Department. He was previously a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-director of Terreform, Center for Advanced Urban Research. He is the co-editor of Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research: 2016), Open Gaza (American University in Cairo Press and Terreform: 2022) and Reconstruction as Violence: The Case of Syria (American University in Cairo Press: Forthcoming).
Kyle Craig is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology and Middle East and North African Studies and a 2022-2023 Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Franke Graduate Fellow at Northwestern University. Kyle’s dissertation investigates the exponential growth of Amman’s public art scene following the 2011 Middle East uprisings, when regional conflict, refugee migrations, and popular discontent prompted individual, state, and NGO investment in the arts
in Jordan. Kyle examines how, through aesthetic expressions and practices, young graffiti and street artists construct and mobilize their imaginations of the ideal future for Amman and how these imaginations become entangled with neoliberal logics of urban development and the state’s regulation of public aesthetics. In addition to his dissertation, Kyle is collaborating with artist Nidal Elkhairy on a graphic novel about the First Palestinian Intifada and is the editor of an ongoing series of open-access essays for Political and Legal Anthropology Review exploring the aesthetic politics of global right-wing, authoritarian, and populist movements.
Eliana Abu-Hamdi is the Associate Dean for Research at the Syracuse University School of Architecture where she leads strategic efforts to promote and increase scholarship, creative work, and sponsored research. Before Syracuse, she was the Project Manager for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC) at MIT and was a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute. Abu-Hamdi also taught courses on Global Poverty, the Ethics of Development, and the History of Urbanism and Global Cities at Hunter College in Manhattan, and Global Urbanism at Boston Architectural College. Her research on architecture and development in Jordan contributes to the debates on the political economy of urbanism in developing cities, thereby establishing a connection between their geopolitical histories and urban present.