Personalia
Marwan M. Kraidy, born in Zouk Mikael, Lebanon, in 1972. Ph.D. from The Ohio University. Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture and Director, Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication (PARGC), Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Fellow (1 September 2014-30 June 2015)
Creative Insurgency: Arab Dissent in Revolutionary Times
Research Question
What is unique about revolutionary cultural production? What is the most basic form of expression in situations of existential threat and scarce resources? Why and how is the human body central to the Arab uprisings?
Project Description
Creative Insurgency explores expressive culture in the Arab uprisings. At once whimsical, grim and heroic, insurgent art and performance-graffiti, videos, digital art, puppetry, body stunts-promote cross-border solidarities and shape revolutionary political identities. The book’s main argument is that the human body is the elemental medium of transgression. Bodies aching for dignity haunt the Arab uprisings and fuel the peculiar aesthetics of insurgent art and culture. By connecting ideas and action, the body is a vital nexus of physical struggle and digital communication, a linchpin of revolutionary change in the contemporary Arab world. Creative insurgency offers insight into the nature of power and resistance and opens a vista onto the future of Arab culture and politics.
Selected Publications
1) Kraidy, Marwan M. (2014). The Politics of Revolutionary Celebrity in the Contemporary Arab World, Public Culture, 27(1)
2) Kraidy, Marwan M. (2010). Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
3) Kraidy, Marwan M. (2005). Hybridity Or, The Cultural Logic Of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press