Cinema and Media Cultures in the Middle East

The purpose of this series is to demarcate and critically examine the shifting terrain of film- and media-making in the Middle East, and of practices of film and media studies regarding it, testing them both against their larger, social enabling conditions at the national, regional, and transnational levels. Titles in the series will engage recent developments in the field of Middle East film and media studies and will help point the field in an intellectually meaningful, pedagogically effective direction in relation to both current and, in some cases, significant, previously ignored older work.
The series is conceived at a moment during which Middle Eastern film and film criticism have begun to develop in new directions. Recent years have witnessed a modest increase in scholarly engagement with topics and modes of inquiry often previously considered outside academic discourse. A handful of books and special journal issues published in English over the past half-decade, focusing on specific Middle Eastern countries, such as Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Iran, Palestine/Israel and Turkey, as well as the long-overdue establishment of cinema studies as an emerging field of academic inquiry within universities located in the Arab world indicate a preponderance of previously unproblematized issues now circulating within the field. These include critical questions from queer and transgendered perspectives about the representation of women, and from indigenous and settler-colonial studies perspectives about the representation of migrant workers and refugees, the growing importance of documentary, digital animation and hybrid shooting, the continuing influence of global cinema imperatives, and the revival of interest in militant, revolutionary and third cinema aesthetics.