Media Infrastructures in the Middle East
American University of Beirut
January 9 to 11, 2020
Conference Program
Thursday January 9, 2020 (West Hall, Auditorium B)
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3.30pm: Opening and welcome Nadia El Cheikh Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, AUB Nabil Dajani, Professor of Media Studies, AUB 4pm: Keynote address “Generators & the Production of Technical Systems" Brian Larkin 
Barnard College, Columbia University
5.30pm: Welcome reception (Second floor West Hall)
| Friday January 10, 2020 (West Hall, Auditorium B) |
9am – 11am, Panel 1: Visual Culture and War
Chair: Zeina Tarraf, AUB
- “Circulation, Infrastructure, and Concealment: The Multiple Vectors of Media Events" Hatim El-Hibri, George Mason University.
- “Digital Imaginaries: Precarity and the 'Good Life' in the Visual Culture of Tyre " - Reem Joudi, American University of Beirut.
- “Humanitarianism and the Life of Cinema Infrastructures" - Viviane Saglier, McGill University.
- “Online Revolutionary Animation of the Arab Uprisings and Its Impact on the Arab Mediascape " – Omar Sayfo, Utrecht University.
11 – 11.30: Coffee break
11.30am – 1.00pm, Panel 2: Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance Chair: Sara Mourad, AUB
- “You are on camera, smile for the police state" - Maya El Helou, University of Toronto.
- “Social media infrastructures in Occupied Palestine" - TBA
- "'This Is Lebanon' : Theorizing Pressure in the Lebanese Pressure Group" - Heather Jaber, University of Pennsylvania.
1.00 – 2.00pm: Lunch
2.00 – 3.45, Panel 3: Sovereignty and the StateChair: Josh Carney, AUB
- “Inmate Generated Footage and Modern State Warfare in Lebanon" - Chafic Najem, Stockholm University.
- “When A Dish Is Not A Dish: Preliminary Notes on Infrastructure and Affect" - Marwan Kraidy, University of Pennsylvania.
- “Politics, Policing, and Policies at Film Festivals in Turkey"- Melis Behlil, Kadir Has University
- “Memorializing Media Use: reflexivity, spectacle and power in the commemoration of Turkey's failed coup attempt" - John McManus, Qatar University.
4.00pm – 5.30pm, Panel 4: Media BordersChair: May Farah, AUB
- “Black Skin, White Cameras: African Asylum-Seekers in Israeli Documentary Film" - Greg Burris, American University of Beirut.
- “Ecologies of Risk: Mapping the Ethical Imperatives of geo spatial intelligence in the Mediterranean Sea" – Monika Halkort, Lebanese American University.
- “Bollywood needs the sound of Arabic: Soft power, media flows and transnational cultural economics of dubbed Hindi content in the Middle East" - Sreya Mitra, American University of Sharjah.
Saturday January 11, 2020 (West Hall, Auditorium B)
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9.00 – 11.00, Panel 5: IndustriesChair: Greg Burris, AUB
- “Combatting Projects of 'Infiltration' & 'Sedition': The Post-2009 Securitization of Media Content in Iran" - Nahid Siamdoust, Yale University.
- “Cinema and the Infrastructures of Secularism" – Baran Germen, Colorado College.
- “Behind the Scene/Seen: Media's Demand of an Anthropological Political Economy" - Mariz Kelada, Brown University.
- “Advertising Infrastructures in the Middle East" - Ilhem Allagui, Northwestern University in Qatar.
- “The Structures of the Kurdish Media System in Northern Syria/Rojava" - Kerem Schanberger, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
11.00-11.30: Coffee Break
11.30 –1.00pm: Panel 6: Material HistoriesChair: Blake Atwood, AUB
- “Historicizing Digital Media in the Middle East: Geopolitical Aesthetics of Imperial Infrastructures and Neoliberal Symptoms" - Ozgun Eylul Iscen, Duke University.
- “An Egyptian Enterprise, for Egyptians: The Locality of Egypt's First Arabic Newspapers, 1870-1885" - N.A. Mansour, Princeton University.
- “Radio Yerevan, TRT, and the Sonic Insurgencies of the Early Cold War" - Nicholas Glastonbury, CUNY Graduate Center.
1.00 – 2.30: Lunch
2.30 – 4.30: Closing Roundtable: Live from the Street: The October Revolution in
the Media (West Hall, Bathish Auditorium)Moderator: Sara Mourad, Media Studies Program
Joelle Boutros, Legal Agenda
Jad Ghosn, New TV
Jean Kassir, Megaphone
Diana Moukalled, Daraj Media
(This session
will be in Arabic with simultaneous translation)
7:30pm: Closing dinner