Nancy Demerdash | Albion College (original) (raw)
Book Reviews by Nancy Demerdash
H-Net Reviews for H-AMCA (Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey), 2017
Journal of North African Studies, 2019
The book under review broadly considers the complex ethical dimensions, subject position, and met... more The book under review broadly considers the complex ethical dimensions, subject position, and metaphor of the animal in the aesthetic practice of the contemporary multimedia French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed (born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1971).
Architectural Histories, 2023
The review offers readers a rare look at the contemporary trends and diversity in building tradit... more The review offers readers a rare look at the contemporary trends and diversity in building traditions, community usages, and spiritual practices of African Muslims and their masjids. Challenging the conventional notion of the masjid as simply a place for prostration and prayer, Apotsos instead gives a novel interpretive approach by analyzing a range of masjids and their multifarious operational and symbolic functions among Muslim congregations in South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, and Tanzania.
Papers by Nancy Demerdash
Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, 2019
Architectural relics of nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism dot cityscapes throughout ou... more Architectural relics of nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism dot cityscapes throughout our globalizing world, just as built traces of colonialism remain embedded within the urban fabric of many European capitals. Neocolonialism and Built Heritage addresses the sustained presence and influence of historic built environments and processes inherited from colonialism within the contemporary lives of cities in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Novel in their focused consideration of ways in which these built environments reinforce neocolonialist connections among former colonies and colonizers, states and international organizations, the volume's case studies engage highly relevant issues such as historic preservation, heritage management, tourism, toponymy, and cultural imperialism. Interrogating the life of the past in the present, authors challenge readers to consider the roles played by a diversity of historic built environments in the ongoing asymmetrical balance of power and unequal distribution of capital around the globe. They present buildings' maintenance, management, reuse, and (re) interpretation, and in so doing they raise important questions, the ramifications of which transcend the specifics of the individual sites and architectural histories they present. Daniel E. Coslett earned a Ph.D. in the history and theory of built environments from the University of Washington's College of Built Environments, as well as an M.A. in the subject from Cornell University. His research addresses colonial and postcolonial North Africa, focusing on intersections of architectural design, urban planning, archaeology, and historic preservation, as well as heritage management and tourism development. At Western Washington University and the University of Washington he teaches subjects including historic preservation, architectural analysis, as well as modern and colonial architectural history. He is also an assistant editor at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. N o t F o r D i s t r i b u t i o n THE ARCHITEXT SERIES Edited by Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King Architectural discourse has traditionally represented buildings as art objects or technical objects. Yet buildings are also social objects in that they are invested with social meaning and shape social relations. Recognizing these assumptions, the Architext series aims to bring together recent debates in social and cultural theory and the study and practice of architecture and urban design. Critical, comparative and interdisciplinary, the books in the series, by theorizing architecture, bring the space of the built environment centrally into the social sciences and humanities, as well as bringing the theoretical insights of the latter into the discourses of architecture and urban design. Particular attention is paid to issues of gender, race, sexuality and the body, to questions of identity and place, to the cultural politics of representation and language, and to the global and postcolonial contexts in which these are addressed.
Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogyd, 2021
In the fall of 2018, Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato (Ohio Wesleyan University) and Dr. Nancy Demerdas... more In the fall of 2018, Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato (Ohio Wesleyan University) and Dr. Nancy Demerdash-Fatemi (Albion College) conducted a teaching collaboration through their courses "Fourteen Kilometers: Mediterranean (Im)Migrations in Contemporary Francophone Cultural Expressions" and "Introduction to African Art." Supported by funding from the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio Mellon Digital Scholarship Award, the courses explored the artistic traditions and literary, journalistic, cinematographic, and visual representations of African peoples and cultures. Students in both courses were encouraged to confront and ask difficult questions about the biases and mythologies that permeate Western perceptions about Africa, African peoples, and cultures; and to become attentive to the problems of history, misrepresentations, and the importance of historiographic revision. In this article, Professors Lewis Cusato and Demerdash-Fatemi show how connecting these courses through an active, experiential, creative, collaborative culminating project, namely the digital platform called "Documenting Africa (https://sites.owu.edu/documentingafrica/)," built with StoryMapJS technology, proved a particularly effective approach for students to satisfy the learning objectives for each class and grapple with those questions at the heart of the courses. In addition, the piece explains each course's assignments and learning individual objectives individually, united through overarching philosophical underpinnings and objectives.
Textile Museum Journal , 2021
Editor Sarah Fee Senior Curator of Global Fashion and Textiles Royal Ontario Museum Support for v... more Editor Sarah Fee Senior Curator of Global Fashion and Textiles Royal Ontario Museum Support for volume 48 of The Textile Museum Journal is generously provided by David W. and Barbara G. Fraser and the Markarian Foundation. The museum is grafeful for their support and commitment to advancing textile scholarship.
Curating Islamic Art Collections Worldwide: From Malacca to Manchester, 2020
The recent global surge of public-and museum-initiated interest in Islamic art has been interpret... more The recent global surge of public-and museum-initiated interest in Islamic art has been interpreted broadly as having a direct correlation with diplomatic imperatives. Since the onslaught of the so-called migrant crisis, German institutions, in particular, have sought to socially engage refugees with the existing collections of Islamic arts and artefacts in Germany. But how can museums showcase and contextualise the arts of Islamic lands across time and space, in a way that is attentive to the traumatic experiences of displacement, migration and forced exile? In assessing various integrationist and assimilationist discourses, this chapter seeks to examine the gravity and consequences of museums' pivotal role in providing an empathic and dignified space in society, where it is otherwise absent.
Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology, 2021
Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity, 2019
I nciting his readers' empathy and pity in a 1953 newspaper editorial on "Habitat: Universalism a... more I nciting his readers' empathy and pity in a 1953 newspaper editorial on "Habitat: Universalism and Regionalism" in the Zürcher Zeitung, Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968), a Swiss art and architectural historian and secretary-general for the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), called attention to the question of how architecture can generate dignity while conforming to the environmental and cultural norms of a region.1 Addressing the dire living conditions of both rural and urban areas scattered across the Maghreb, his title spoke to the urgency of the broader global problematic of habitat. That also happened to be the theme of CIAM's Ninth International Congress, which convened at the École des Arts et Métiers in Aix-en-Provence, France, from July 19 to 21, 1953. From the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to other so-called remote and faroff villages nestled in the Sahara, stretching between Algiers and Tunis, people make do with the realities and material constraints of their environment. Singling out the bidonville, or "tin-can,'" towns, constructed mostly from metal refuse, Giedion underscored the grim quality of life prevalent throughout the entirety of postwar North Africa, but he also cited the work of architect Pierre-André Emery (1903-1982)2 and his team, consisting of
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2021
Abstract Many might argue that the prospects of a progressive politics and democratic governance ... more Abstract Many might argue that the prospects of a progressive politics and democratic governance that the 2011 Egyptian revolution sought to realize have completely vanished. Those revolutionary aspirations for social change, political justice, economic opportunity, or civic equality have disintegrated, for some, into disillusioned desperations. In turn, recent cultural discourse about Egypt’s post-revolutionary malaise has often been couched in terms of “dystopia.” However, this paper posits that Egyptian artists are testing the limits of their creative expression, experimenting to give rise to alternative heterotopias. Specifically, this paper examines how two contemporary artists, Lara Baladi and Ganzeer, wrestle with the archives and memories of the 2011 Egyptian revolution to visually, digitally theorize and reconstitute its political resonance, salience and urgency. Through digital and graphic media, Cairo-based and diasporic Egyptian artists alike continue to ruminate on the country’s present stagnation all while keeping a pulse on the potential for a future revolutionary resurgence.
The Art Salon in the Arab Region : Politics of Taste Making, 2020
Art and Cultural Production in the GCC/Journal of Arabian Studies, 2017
In an effort to explore the evolution of the art and cultural scene in the Gulf Cooperation Counc... more In an effort to explore the evolution of the art and cultural scene in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, and to understand the complexities of these fields, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar undertook a two-year research initiative titled “Art and Cultural Production in the GCC.” Artists, cultural administrators, curators, critics, and academics were invited to Doha to attend two separate meetings in which they debated topics of relevance to the GCC’s cultural field. The research culminated in the publication of original studies in a special issue of the Journal of Arabian Studies (August 2017). This project builds on the available literature by contributing towards furthering knowledge on the prevailing issues around art and cultural production in the Gulf.
Perspective, 2017
Actualité en histoire de l'art 2 | 2017 Le Maghreb L'Habitation tunisienne de Victor Valensi (192... more Actualité en histoire de l'art 2 | 2017 Le Maghreb L'Habitation tunisienne de Victor Valensi (1928). Visions d'un architecte de culture juive sur le pluralisme des modernités vernaculaires en Tunisie
The Journal of North African Studies, 2016
ABSTRACT Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consci... more ABSTRACT Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consciousness across the Mashreq and Maghreb, they too increased the mass movements and migrations of humanity. That Maghrebi spheres of cultural production have sought to document and problematise these seismic transformations is undeniable. While narratives of hardship, stagnation, and political struggles undergird most analyses of the post-revolutionary Maghreb and discourses of migration, this essay seeks instead to demonstrate how the visual strategies of contemporary artists render the traumas of dislocation – both real and metaphysical – and in turn, engender a politics and aesthetics of placelessness. This essay probes into the placeless nature of not only the artists' liminal operations but also explores the conceptual methods through which the tensions of migrancy are manifest. Yet, the question remains: How does the trope of the border inform the creative expressions of not only entrapment, but endless mobility? In what ways do these artists adopt visual praxes that are politically engaged? How do fraught and layered transnational narratives of migration speak to the complexities of placelessness and displacement? How are the figure and position of the migrant visually treated in their works? Commanding a transregional and liminal visuality, and guided by the works of artists such as Bouchra Khalili, Yto Barrada, Kader Attia, Driss Ouadahi, Mohamed Ben Slama, Zineb Sedira, and Moufida Fedhila, among others, this essay theorises the political junctures and paradoxes of place/placelessness, and the transnational networks of empathy and solidarity in which these artists' works are inscribed.
ABE Journal, 2016
This dissertation investigates the dialectical discourses of modernism and the vernacular in Tuni... more This dissertation investigates the dialectical discourses of modernism and the vernacular in Tunisian architectural and urban projects, from the late French protectorate into the period of independence, 1940-1970. With a particular focus on issues of habitation and heritage, this project tracks the reorganization of social space in the reconstruction efforts of the postwar French colonial administration and the architectural and patrimonial discourses of the Tunisian nation-state that came into existence in 1956. In an era that witnessed mass-scale land expropriations, rural-urban migrations, and popular anti-colonial sentiment, this project traces the material effects of Tunisians' displacements and urban adaptations to their rapidly changing socio-political condition. Underscoring the dialectics intrinsic to the postwar notion of development, namely, tensions between formal and informal settlements, vernacular building traditions and prefabrication methods, and patrimonial preservation and erasure, this dissertation explores the ideological negotiations of architectural progress in the longue durée of decolonization. Throughout this tumultuous period, social housing projects sprouted in parallel with the spread of gourbivilles (earthen dwellings) and bidonvilles ('tin can' towns) on the outskirts of Tunisia's urban centers. Both colonial and postcolonial institutional and state-led reckonings with vernacular architecture forwarded not only modernist building agendas, but promoted primitivizing mythologies of local construction techniques, rooted in racist attitudes towards the purportedly backward indigène. Challenging the predominant historiographical narrative that presents the independence of 1956 as a stark political rupture, this dissertation instead demonstrates that the vestiges of urban and preservationist policy schemes remained ingrained, on an institutional level, from protectorate rule. How the spatial and political processes of decolonization, nation-building, and development intersect with the ethics and economics of habitation undergirds this project. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the support of many individuals and institutions, the completion of this dissertation would have been impossible. First and foremost, I must thank my dissertation adviser and mentor, Esther da Costa Meyer, for putting her faith and confidence in me at the outset of my studies here at Princeton. Only with her support, warmth, unwavering ethics, and intellectual guidance that she has administered along the way, would I have been able to see this project to fruition. M'hamed Oualdi has played an absolutely critical role in the later stages of this project's growth and his expertise, encouragement and keen insights I deeply appreciate. Chika Okeke-Agulu has been equally as instrumental in pushing me to think through issues pertaining to African modernisms, and his scholarship, now and always, serves as a true model and source of inspiration for me. Without the critical input of Hannah Feldman, my work would have suffered, and I am supremely thankful for her involvement in this project. Elizabeth Anne McCauley has been supportive of me professionally and I treasure her humor and genuine goodwill. My undergraduate mentor, Charles Hallisey, has been a rock to me for the last decade. Together, their generosity of spirit knows no bounds and it is their deep humanism and pursuit to understand the pleasures and paradoxes of beauty that I will continue to carry with me. Their intellectual passion will always be a powerful touchstone to me. A number of institutions have propelled this project forward, and I am grateful for their
While contemporary artists in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries understand how the the... more While contemporary artists in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries understand how the thematic and aesthetic limits imposed on their work can lead to various forms of censorship, their widespread, deliberate self-censorship and blatant avoidance of certain content is perhaps more worrying. But not all creative productivity is whitewashed. Blurred lines and unclear constraints may yield unsuspected ingenuity, enabling artists to circumvent the censors, while many adopt conceptualist aesthetic choices as a means of pushing boundaries on freedom of expression, amidst an already complex matrix of governments, sponsors, patrons, ideologies, and alliances. With information and communication technologies, and other social media platforms permeating the region, artists can access otherwise unheard communities, gain new followers, and initiate important conversations. Such changes happen gradually and spaces for criticality are therefore pivotal. The nuances and contradictions of artistic censorship and self-censorship in the GCC region are explored, focusing on key actors and interlocutors.
H-Net Reviews for H-AMCA (Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey), 2017
Journal of North African Studies, 2019
The book under review broadly considers the complex ethical dimensions, subject position, and met... more The book under review broadly considers the complex ethical dimensions, subject position, and metaphor of the animal in the aesthetic practice of the contemporary multimedia French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed (born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1971).
Architectural Histories, 2023
The review offers readers a rare look at the contemporary trends and diversity in building tradit... more The review offers readers a rare look at the contemporary trends and diversity in building traditions, community usages, and spiritual practices of African Muslims and their masjids. Challenging the conventional notion of the masjid as simply a place for prostration and prayer, Apotsos instead gives a novel interpretive approach by analyzing a range of masjids and their multifarious operational and symbolic functions among Muslim congregations in South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, and Tanzania.
Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, 2019
Architectural relics of nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism dot cityscapes throughout ou... more Architectural relics of nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism dot cityscapes throughout our globalizing world, just as built traces of colonialism remain embedded within the urban fabric of many European capitals. Neocolonialism and Built Heritage addresses the sustained presence and influence of historic built environments and processes inherited from colonialism within the contemporary lives of cities in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Novel in their focused consideration of ways in which these built environments reinforce neocolonialist connections among former colonies and colonizers, states and international organizations, the volume's case studies engage highly relevant issues such as historic preservation, heritage management, tourism, toponymy, and cultural imperialism. Interrogating the life of the past in the present, authors challenge readers to consider the roles played by a diversity of historic built environments in the ongoing asymmetrical balance of power and unequal distribution of capital around the globe. They present buildings' maintenance, management, reuse, and (re) interpretation, and in so doing they raise important questions, the ramifications of which transcend the specifics of the individual sites and architectural histories they present. Daniel E. Coslett earned a Ph.D. in the history and theory of built environments from the University of Washington's College of Built Environments, as well as an M.A. in the subject from Cornell University. His research addresses colonial and postcolonial North Africa, focusing on intersections of architectural design, urban planning, archaeology, and historic preservation, as well as heritage management and tourism development. At Western Washington University and the University of Washington he teaches subjects including historic preservation, architectural analysis, as well as modern and colonial architectural history. He is also an assistant editor at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. N o t F o r D i s t r i b u t i o n THE ARCHITEXT SERIES Edited by Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King Architectural discourse has traditionally represented buildings as art objects or technical objects. Yet buildings are also social objects in that they are invested with social meaning and shape social relations. Recognizing these assumptions, the Architext series aims to bring together recent debates in social and cultural theory and the study and practice of architecture and urban design. Critical, comparative and interdisciplinary, the books in the series, by theorizing architecture, bring the space of the built environment centrally into the social sciences and humanities, as well as bringing the theoretical insights of the latter into the discourses of architecture and urban design. Particular attention is paid to issues of gender, race, sexuality and the body, to questions of identity and place, to the cultural politics of representation and language, and to the global and postcolonial contexts in which these are addressed.
Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogyd, 2021
In the fall of 2018, Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato (Ohio Wesleyan University) and Dr. Nancy Demerdas... more In the fall of 2018, Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato (Ohio Wesleyan University) and Dr. Nancy Demerdash-Fatemi (Albion College) conducted a teaching collaboration through their courses "Fourteen Kilometers: Mediterranean (Im)Migrations in Contemporary Francophone Cultural Expressions" and "Introduction to African Art." Supported by funding from the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio Mellon Digital Scholarship Award, the courses explored the artistic traditions and literary, journalistic, cinematographic, and visual representations of African peoples and cultures. Students in both courses were encouraged to confront and ask difficult questions about the biases and mythologies that permeate Western perceptions about Africa, African peoples, and cultures; and to become attentive to the problems of history, misrepresentations, and the importance of historiographic revision. In this article, Professors Lewis Cusato and Demerdash-Fatemi show how connecting these courses through an active, experiential, creative, collaborative culminating project, namely the digital platform called "Documenting Africa (https://sites.owu.edu/documentingafrica/)," built with StoryMapJS technology, proved a particularly effective approach for students to satisfy the learning objectives for each class and grapple with those questions at the heart of the courses. In addition, the piece explains each course's assignments and learning individual objectives individually, united through overarching philosophical underpinnings and objectives.
Textile Museum Journal , 2021
Editor Sarah Fee Senior Curator of Global Fashion and Textiles Royal Ontario Museum Support for v... more Editor Sarah Fee Senior Curator of Global Fashion and Textiles Royal Ontario Museum Support for volume 48 of The Textile Museum Journal is generously provided by David W. and Barbara G. Fraser and the Markarian Foundation. The museum is grafeful for their support and commitment to advancing textile scholarship.
Curating Islamic Art Collections Worldwide: From Malacca to Manchester, 2020
The recent global surge of public-and museum-initiated interest in Islamic art has been interpret... more The recent global surge of public-and museum-initiated interest in Islamic art has been interpreted broadly as having a direct correlation with diplomatic imperatives. Since the onslaught of the so-called migrant crisis, German institutions, in particular, have sought to socially engage refugees with the existing collections of Islamic arts and artefacts in Germany. But how can museums showcase and contextualise the arts of Islamic lands across time and space, in a way that is attentive to the traumatic experiences of displacement, migration and forced exile? In assessing various integrationist and assimilationist discourses, this chapter seeks to examine the gravity and consequences of museums' pivotal role in providing an empathic and dignified space in society, where it is otherwise absent.
Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology, 2021
Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity, 2019
I nciting his readers' empathy and pity in a 1953 newspaper editorial on "Habitat: Universalism a... more I nciting his readers' empathy and pity in a 1953 newspaper editorial on "Habitat: Universalism and Regionalism" in the Zürcher Zeitung, Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968), a Swiss art and architectural historian and secretary-general for the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), called attention to the question of how architecture can generate dignity while conforming to the environmental and cultural norms of a region.1 Addressing the dire living conditions of both rural and urban areas scattered across the Maghreb, his title spoke to the urgency of the broader global problematic of habitat. That also happened to be the theme of CIAM's Ninth International Congress, which convened at the École des Arts et Métiers in Aix-en-Provence, France, from July 19 to 21, 1953. From the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to other so-called remote and faroff villages nestled in the Sahara, stretching between Algiers and Tunis, people make do with the realities and material constraints of their environment. Singling out the bidonville, or "tin-can,'" towns, constructed mostly from metal refuse, Giedion underscored the grim quality of life prevalent throughout the entirety of postwar North Africa, but he also cited the work of architect Pierre-André Emery (1903-1982)2 and his team, consisting of
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2021
Abstract Many might argue that the prospects of a progressive politics and democratic governance ... more Abstract Many might argue that the prospects of a progressive politics and democratic governance that the 2011 Egyptian revolution sought to realize have completely vanished. Those revolutionary aspirations for social change, political justice, economic opportunity, or civic equality have disintegrated, for some, into disillusioned desperations. In turn, recent cultural discourse about Egypt’s post-revolutionary malaise has often been couched in terms of “dystopia.” However, this paper posits that Egyptian artists are testing the limits of their creative expression, experimenting to give rise to alternative heterotopias. Specifically, this paper examines how two contemporary artists, Lara Baladi and Ganzeer, wrestle with the archives and memories of the 2011 Egyptian revolution to visually, digitally theorize and reconstitute its political resonance, salience and urgency. Through digital and graphic media, Cairo-based and diasporic Egyptian artists alike continue to ruminate on the country’s present stagnation all while keeping a pulse on the potential for a future revolutionary resurgence.
The Art Salon in the Arab Region : Politics of Taste Making, 2020
Art and Cultural Production in the GCC/Journal of Arabian Studies, 2017
In an effort to explore the evolution of the art and cultural scene in the Gulf Cooperation Counc... more In an effort to explore the evolution of the art and cultural scene in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, and to understand the complexities of these fields, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar undertook a two-year research initiative titled “Art and Cultural Production in the GCC.” Artists, cultural administrators, curators, critics, and academics were invited to Doha to attend two separate meetings in which they debated topics of relevance to the GCC’s cultural field. The research culminated in the publication of original studies in a special issue of the Journal of Arabian Studies (August 2017). This project builds on the available literature by contributing towards furthering knowledge on the prevailing issues around art and cultural production in the Gulf.
Perspective, 2017
Actualité en histoire de l'art 2 | 2017 Le Maghreb L'Habitation tunisienne de Victor Valensi (192... more Actualité en histoire de l'art 2 | 2017 Le Maghreb L'Habitation tunisienne de Victor Valensi (1928). Visions d'un architecte de culture juive sur le pluralisme des modernités vernaculaires en Tunisie
The Journal of North African Studies, 2016
ABSTRACT Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consci... more ABSTRACT Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consciousness across the Mashreq and Maghreb, they too increased the mass movements and migrations of humanity. That Maghrebi spheres of cultural production have sought to document and problematise these seismic transformations is undeniable. While narratives of hardship, stagnation, and political struggles undergird most analyses of the post-revolutionary Maghreb and discourses of migration, this essay seeks instead to demonstrate how the visual strategies of contemporary artists render the traumas of dislocation – both real and metaphysical – and in turn, engender a politics and aesthetics of placelessness. This essay probes into the placeless nature of not only the artists' liminal operations but also explores the conceptual methods through which the tensions of migrancy are manifest. Yet, the question remains: How does the trope of the border inform the creative expressions of not only entrapment, but endless mobility? In what ways do these artists adopt visual praxes that are politically engaged? How do fraught and layered transnational narratives of migration speak to the complexities of placelessness and displacement? How are the figure and position of the migrant visually treated in their works? Commanding a transregional and liminal visuality, and guided by the works of artists such as Bouchra Khalili, Yto Barrada, Kader Attia, Driss Ouadahi, Mohamed Ben Slama, Zineb Sedira, and Moufida Fedhila, among others, this essay theorises the political junctures and paradoxes of place/placelessness, and the transnational networks of empathy and solidarity in which these artists' works are inscribed.
ABE Journal, 2016
This dissertation investigates the dialectical discourses of modernism and the vernacular in Tuni... more This dissertation investigates the dialectical discourses of modernism and the vernacular in Tunisian architectural and urban projects, from the late French protectorate into the period of independence, 1940-1970. With a particular focus on issues of habitation and heritage, this project tracks the reorganization of social space in the reconstruction efforts of the postwar French colonial administration and the architectural and patrimonial discourses of the Tunisian nation-state that came into existence in 1956. In an era that witnessed mass-scale land expropriations, rural-urban migrations, and popular anti-colonial sentiment, this project traces the material effects of Tunisians' displacements and urban adaptations to their rapidly changing socio-political condition. Underscoring the dialectics intrinsic to the postwar notion of development, namely, tensions between formal and informal settlements, vernacular building traditions and prefabrication methods, and patrimonial preservation and erasure, this dissertation explores the ideological negotiations of architectural progress in the longue durée of decolonization. Throughout this tumultuous period, social housing projects sprouted in parallel with the spread of gourbivilles (earthen dwellings) and bidonvilles ('tin can' towns) on the outskirts of Tunisia's urban centers. Both colonial and postcolonial institutional and state-led reckonings with vernacular architecture forwarded not only modernist building agendas, but promoted primitivizing mythologies of local construction techniques, rooted in racist attitudes towards the purportedly backward indigène. Challenging the predominant historiographical narrative that presents the independence of 1956 as a stark political rupture, this dissertation instead demonstrates that the vestiges of urban and preservationist policy schemes remained ingrained, on an institutional level, from protectorate rule. How the spatial and political processes of decolonization, nation-building, and development intersect with the ethics and economics of habitation undergirds this project. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the support of many individuals and institutions, the completion of this dissertation would have been impossible. First and foremost, I must thank my dissertation adviser and mentor, Esther da Costa Meyer, for putting her faith and confidence in me at the outset of my studies here at Princeton. Only with her support, warmth, unwavering ethics, and intellectual guidance that she has administered along the way, would I have been able to see this project to fruition. M'hamed Oualdi has played an absolutely critical role in the later stages of this project's growth and his expertise, encouragement and keen insights I deeply appreciate. Chika Okeke-Agulu has been equally as instrumental in pushing me to think through issues pertaining to African modernisms, and his scholarship, now and always, serves as a true model and source of inspiration for me. Without the critical input of Hannah Feldman, my work would have suffered, and I am supremely thankful for her involvement in this project. Elizabeth Anne McCauley has been supportive of me professionally and I treasure her humor and genuine goodwill. My undergraduate mentor, Charles Hallisey, has been a rock to me for the last decade. Together, their generosity of spirit knows no bounds and it is their deep humanism and pursuit to understand the pleasures and paradoxes of beauty that I will continue to carry with me. Their intellectual passion will always be a powerful touchstone to me. A number of institutions have propelled this project forward, and I am grateful for their
While contemporary artists in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries understand how the the... more While contemporary artists in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries understand how the thematic and aesthetic limits imposed on their work can lead to various forms of censorship, their widespread, deliberate self-censorship and blatant avoidance of certain content is perhaps more worrying. But not all creative productivity is whitewashed. Blurred lines and unclear constraints may yield unsuspected ingenuity, enabling artists to circumvent the censors, while many adopt conceptualist aesthetic choices as a means of pushing boundaries on freedom of expression, amidst an already complex matrix of governments, sponsors, patrons, ideologies, and alliances. With information and communication technologies, and other social media platforms permeating the region, artists can access otherwise unheard communities, gain new followers, and initiate important conversations. Such changes happen gradually and spaces for criticality are therefore pivotal. The nuances and contradictions of artistic censorship and self-censorship in the GCC region are explored, focusing on key actors and interlocutors.
... Specifically, the young lady Malika Hamza (whom I affectionately dubbed "malikat al-makt... more ... Specifically, the young lady Malika Hamza (whom I affectionately dubbed "malikat al-maktaba," or "Queen of the Library"), a student at Mohammed V University in Rabat and aspiring librarian, facilitated when my Arabic failed to articulate my needs, or when some Derija words ...
Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consciousness a... more Inasmuch as the events of 2010 and 2011 ushered in tremendous shifts in political consciousness across the Mashreq and Maghreb, they too increased the mass movements and migrations of humanity. That Maghrebi spheres of cultural production have sought to document and problematise these seismic transformations is undeniable. While narratives of hardship, stagnation, and political struggles undergird most analyses of the post-revolutionary Maghreb and discourses of migration, this essay seeks instead to demonstrate how the visual strategies of contemporary artists render the traumas of dislocationboth real and metaphysicaland in turn, engender a politics and aesthetics of placelessness. This essay probes into the placeless nature of not only the artists' liminal operations but also explores the conceptual methods through which the tensions of migrancy are manifest. Yet, the question remains: How does the trope of the border inform the creative expressions of not only entrapment, but endless mobility? In what ways do these artists adopt visual praxes that are politically engaged? How do fraught and layered transnational narratives of migration speak to the complexities of placelessness and displacement? How are the figure and position of the migrant visually treated in their works? Commanding a transregional and liminal visuality, and guided by the works of artists such as Bouchra Khalili, Yto Barrada, Kader Attia, Driss Ouadahi, Mohamed Ben Slama, Zineb Sedira, and Moufida Fedhila, among others, this essay theorises the political junctures and paradoxes of place/ placelessness, and the transnational networks of empathy and solidarity in which these artists' works are inscribed.
This course examines contemporary artistic practices of artists based in the Middle East and with... more This course examines contemporary artistic practices of artists based in the Middle East and within the diaspora, through the lens of women's perspectives and gender issues. Taking cues from the late Jamaica-born cultural theorist Stuart Hall-in his argument that cultural identity is fluid, mobile, hybrid, and often plural in nature-this mid-level course examines contemporary visual and literary cultures (e.g. architecture, literature, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and beyond) against the backdrop of migration and cosmopolitanism, created by predominantly women artists who originally hail from, or have roots in, a range of Middle Eastern and North African nations. In addition to the intersections of cultural identity and geopolitics, our queries will focus on artistic production vis-àvis issues of gender and women's plural subjectivities. Identity in the Middle East and North Africa is an inherently complex matter, and it is rendered even more complex with the women artists we will look at this module. The Middle East and North Africa are plural, diverse regions with incredibly multicultural, multi-religious (e.g. Muslim (Shi'a, Sunni), Jewish, Coptic, Catholic, Druze, Orthodox Christian, Zoroastrian, etc.), multiethnic (e.g. Armenian, Jewish, Berber/Amazigh, Arab, Turkic, Kurdish, Farsi/Persian, etc.), multilingual (e.g. Arabic (a Semitic language) and its various dialects, Hebrew, Amazigh (a Berber language), Farsi (an Indo-European language), Turkish (Ural-Altaic language), Urdu (Indo-Aryan/Indo-European)) populations. Formerly referred to as the "Orient" or "Near East" by western colonial officials and administrators, we now understand those labels to be problematic for their presumptuous definition of this vast and multifarious region in terms of its relation to and orientation vis-à-vis Europe. It deserves mentioning that the term "Middle East" is also fraught with colonial connotations, but it is the descriptor we will nevertheless be employing in this class. Moreover, while the vast majority of women artists whom we will be exploring come from Muslim backgrounds, it would also be specious to call them "Muslim artists" or claim that they hail from the "Islamic World," as many of them do not practice Islam, though they might self-identify as culturally Muslim or some might proudly consider themselves Arab or Persian but not Muslim, for example. Such self-identifications are malleable, ever-changing, and often seemingly contradictory.
