Nathaniel Greenberg | George Mason University (original) (raw)

Books by Nathaniel Greenberg

Edinburgh University Press, 2019

On January 27 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen... more On January 27 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with an article headlined 'Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising'. The effect of the revelation was immediate, helping set in motion an aggressive counter-narrative to the nascent story of the Arab Spring. The article featured a cluster of virulent commentators all pushing the same story: the CIA, George Soros and Hillary Clinton were attempting to take over Egypt. Many of these commentators were trolls, some of whom reappeared in 2016 to help elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history.

In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself ... more In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself exclusively to writing for film. The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz is the first full-length study in English to examine this critical period in the author’s career and to contextualize it within the scope of post-revolutionary Egyptian politics and culture. Before returning to literature in 1959 with his post-revolutionary masterpiece Children of the Alley, Mahfouz wrote or co-wrote some twenty odd scripts, many of them among the most successful in Egyptian history. He did so at a time when film was the country’s second largest export commodity after cotton and the domestic film industry in Egypt the fourth largest in the world. Artistically, his screenplays channeled the ideology of the revolution, often raising themes of oppression and liberation, and almost always within a storyline of criminal transgression. But as he discussed in later articles and interviews, the capacity for film to enumerate the flow of life—through montage, jump cuts, lighting, and close ups—helped him to develop a darker, faster, and more complex vision of society. This technological revolution was followed by a literary one in the 1960s, a time when Mahfouz would generate through a series of short, trenchant, and often comedic novellas, a deeply measured meditation on the experience of collective upheaval and the interpersonal impact of political transformation.

Papers by Nathaniel Greenberg

This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisin... more This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history

Studies in the Novel, 2019

I. The Static, the Dynamic, and the Arab Boom The decades following the collapse of the colonial-... more I. The Static, the Dynamic, and the Arab Boom The decades following the collapse of the colonial-backed regimes-from Egypt (1952) and Morocco (1956) to Tunisia (1956) and Iraq (1958)-brought forth multiple revolutions for artists in the Arab world, political as well as social, technical as well as cultural. In the wake of the so-called "Arab Spring" and the explosion of artistic and critical activity that followed, Arabic cultural production from this earlier period has witnessed a spate of scholarly interest. The following essay proposes to add to the discussion by examining one dimension that binds together several key works from this time: an aspect I describe, borrowing the words of critic and novelist Yahya Haqqi, as "the static and the dynamic" of post-revolutionary aesthetics. 1 Rather than attempting to survey the entire field of post-revolutionary Arabic literature, this essay focuses on four works that are universally understood to have made a major contribution to the development of the Arabic novel. At the core of the post-revolutionary cultural boom there appeared a crisis of confidence. As the newly independent nations rambled towards an uncertain destiny, writers and politicians looked to the past in an attempt to resuscitate order. "Ours is a scientific socialism based on science not on chaos," claimed Gamal 'Abdel Nasser in 1954:

In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself e... more In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself exclusively to writing for film. The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz is the first full-length study in English to examine this critical period in the author’s career and to contextualize it within the scope of post-revolutionary Egyptian politics and culture. Before returning to literature in 1959 with his post-revolutionary masterpiece Children of the Alley, Mahfouz wrote or co-wrote some twenty odd scripts, many of them among the most successful in Egyptian history. He did so at a time when film was the country’s second largest export commodity after cotton and the domestic film industry in Egypt the fourth largest in the world. Artistically, his screenplays channeled the ideology of the revolution, often raising themes of oppression and liberation, and almost always within a storyline of criminal transgression. But as he discussed in later articles and interviews, the capacity for film to enumerate the flow of life—through montage, jump cuts, lighting, and close ups—helped him to develop a darker, faster, and more complex vision of society. This technological revolution was followed by a literary one in the 1960s, a time when Mahfouz would generate through a series of short, trenchant, and often comedic novellas, a deeply measured meditation on the experience of collective upheaval and the interpersonal impact of political transformation.

International Journal of Communication, May 29, 2021

Media coverage of protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 26, 2020, tended to ascrib... more Media coverage of protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 26, 2020, tended to ascribe to the demonstrations two faces: One, presented by organizers and supporters, was a decentralized movement for peaceful change; the other was a violent conspiracy for the disruption of order. Good analysis has flowed into the question of domestic media bias in the coverage of Summer 2020’s historical events. Less attention, however, has been directed to the ways foreign media covered the protests. One of the most powerful voices in framing the story of the protests to a global audience was Russia’s statesponsored media behemoth RT. And nowhere was RT’s particular take on the demonstrations more pronounced than its Arabic-language broadcast RT Arabic or RT3. Through the lens of discourse analysis, I focus on a small sample of quintessential reports to explore how RT3 covered Summer 2020’s momentous events, what their reporting tells us about Kremlin disinformation strategies, and how RT3’s coverage of the protests factors into the Kremlin’s greater geopolitical agenda vis-à-vis the Middle East and North Africa.

The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and crea... more The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and creative work on cinema. The originals maybe in any language and come from any period or geographic region. We welcome two types of proposals: (1) a single text such as a journal article, book chapter, or self-contained section of a book that focuses on a particular topic in a unified, coherent way; and (2) a group of smaller texts that are linked thematically, geographically, or otherwise. The total word count of the introduction and translated text(s) should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words in English. One grant-in-aid of $1,000 will be paid to the translator(s) for copyright clearance and as honoraria. Proposals to translate one's own work will not be considered. SCMS members are invited submit proposals, prepared in accordance with the Chicago Style Manual, with the following: 1. Full bibliographical data of the original text(s). 2. The name and credentials of the translator(s). 3. ...

International Journal of Communication, 2020

Amid the bloodshed of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic Stat... more Amid the bloodshed of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) introduced into their repertoire a new tool of war: the handheld camera. Tracing the evolution of the ghazwa, or military expedition aesthetic, in ISI and later ISIS filmmaking, this article explores the way in which the organization’s primary organ of communication, Al-Furqan Media Foundation, expanded from its origins as a documentary film unit to become one of the world’s most potent vehicles of performative violence. Drawing on a comparative frame of reference with other active media units within the greater sphere of Al-Qaeda communications, including the Al-Andalus Establishment for Media Production of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Furqan Media in the Egyptian Sinai, this article examines the manner in which aesthetic prerogatives, intertwined with religious mythology, served to transcend and unite disparate political factions around a common “narrative ide...

Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2019

Philippe-Joseph Salazar's 2017 masterpiece Words Are Weapons poses a fundamental question: Sh... more Philippe-Joseph Salazar's 2017 masterpiece Words Are Weapons poses a fundamental question: Should we read al-Qaeda? Can we teach the aesthetics that made ISIS infamous? Or in studying the phenomenon do we perpetuate its influence? Government and media campaigns to counter falsehoods, take down propaganda, or superimpose interpretation seek to silence the enemy while preserving the presumed sensibilities of their intended audience. Yet such strategy leaves the door open to the infinitely more seductive power of mystery. Like Arendt's work on Eichmann, Salazar's book challenges us to confront the extreme violence of ISIS in its absolute form. What he finds is a mirror onto Western society—a culture of paralysis in the face of danger and indifference in the face of zealotry. The book is arguably the single indispensable work to date for understanding the psychological and communicative complexities of the war formerly known as the “Global War on Terrorism.”

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2018

This article is a study of Ahmad Khaled Tawfik's 2008 best-selling novel Utopia within the contex... more This article is a study of Ahmad Khaled Tawfik's 2008 best-selling novel Utopia within the context of Arabic science fiction, the genre of Arabic literature experiencing a certain renewal in the recent years. The analysis of the novel's themes, motifs, style, language and literary techniques is aimed at understanding its main influences and its place in the development of Arabic science fiction. As a dystopian novel, it is influenced by the respective European tradition while being socially relevant to the problems of today's Egypt as well. The article also offers a brief look at Arabic science fiction in general at the present state of its evolution.

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2017

In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Isla... more In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a wave of satirical production depicting the group flooded the Arab media landscape. Seemingly spontaneous in some instances and tightly measured in others, the Arab comedy offensive paralleled strategic efforts by the United States and its allies to ‘take back the Internet’ from ISIS propagandists. In this essay, I examine the role of aesthetics, broadly, and satire in particular, in the creation and execution of ‘counter-narratives’ in the war against ISIS. Drawing on the pioneering theories of Fred Forest and others, I argue that in the age of digital reproduction, truth-based messaging campaigns underestimate the power of myth in swaying hearts and minds. As a modus of expression conceived as an act of fabrication, satire is poised to counter myth with myth. But artists must balance a very fine line.

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2017

This article examines a corpus of extremist Islamist texts for the period from 2007 to 2012, incl... more This article examines a corpus of extremist Islamist texts for the period from 2007 to 2012, including transcripts of audio and videos produced by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM). Utilizing narrative analysis, we examine the way AQIM used mythic discourse to disseminate its ideology to audiences and to defend its actions and focus on the deployment of longstanding culturally-embedded ‘master narratives’ in fragmentary forms as sense-making devices. In the process, we argue that narrative analysis can provide insights into ideologies and organizations in the Middle East and North African region that may elude other analytical methods.

Edinburgh University Press, 2019

On January 27 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen... more On January 27 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with an article headlined 'Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising'. The effect of the revelation was immediate, helping set in motion an aggressive counter-narrative to the nascent story of the Arab Spring. The article featured a cluster of virulent commentators all pushing the same story: the CIA, George Soros and Hillary Clinton were attempting to take over Egypt. Many of these commentators were trolls, some of whom reappeared in 2016 to help elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history.

In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself ... more In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself exclusively to writing for film. The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz is the first full-length study in English to examine this critical period in the author’s career and to contextualize it within the scope of post-revolutionary Egyptian politics and culture. Before returning to literature in 1959 with his post-revolutionary masterpiece Children of the Alley, Mahfouz wrote or co-wrote some twenty odd scripts, many of them among the most successful in Egyptian history. He did so at a time when film was the country’s second largest export commodity after cotton and the domestic film industry in Egypt the fourth largest in the world. Artistically, his screenplays channeled the ideology of the revolution, often raising themes of oppression and liberation, and almost always within a storyline of criminal transgression. But as he discussed in later articles and interviews, the capacity for film to enumerate the flow of life—through montage, jump cuts, lighting, and close ups—helped him to develop a darker, faster, and more complex vision of society. This technological revolution was followed by a literary one in the 1960s, a time when Mahfouz would generate through a series of short, trenchant, and often comedic novellas, a deeply measured meditation on the experience of collective upheaval and the interpersonal impact of political transformation.

This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisin... more This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history

Studies in the Novel, 2019

I. The Static, the Dynamic, and the Arab Boom The decades following the collapse of the colonial-... more I. The Static, the Dynamic, and the Arab Boom The decades following the collapse of the colonial-backed regimes-from Egypt (1952) and Morocco (1956) to Tunisia (1956) and Iraq (1958)-brought forth multiple revolutions for artists in the Arab world, political as well as social, technical as well as cultural. In the wake of the so-called "Arab Spring" and the explosion of artistic and critical activity that followed, Arabic cultural production from this earlier period has witnessed a spate of scholarly interest. The following essay proposes to add to the discussion by examining one dimension that binds together several key works from this time: an aspect I describe, borrowing the words of critic and novelist Yahya Haqqi, as "the static and the dynamic" of post-revolutionary aesthetics. 1 Rather than attempting to survey the entire field of post-revolutionary Arabic literature, this essay focuses on four works that are universally understood to have made a major contribution to the development of the Arabic novel. At the core of the post-revolutionary cultural boom there appeared a crisis of confidence. As the newly independent nations rambled towards an uncertain destiny, writers and politicians looked to the past in an attempt to resuscitate order. "Ours is a scientific socialism based on science not on chaos," claimed Gamal 'Abdel Nasser in 1954:

In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself e... more In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself exclusively to writing for film. The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz is the first full-length study in English to examine this critical period in the author’s career and to contextualize it within the scope of post-revolutionary Egyptian politics and culture. Before returning to literature in 1959 with his post-revolutionary masterpiece Children of the Alley, Mahfouz wrote or co-wrote some twenty odd scripts, many of them among the most successful in Egyptian history. He did so at a time when film was the country’s second largest export commodity after cotton and the domestic film industry in Egypt the fourth largest in the world. Artistically, his screenplays channeled the ideology of the revolution, often raising themes of oppression and liberation, and almost always within a storyline of criminal transgression. But as he discussed in later articles and interviews, the capacity for film to enumerate the flow of life—through montage, jump cuts, lighting, and close ups—helped him to develop a darker, faster, and more complex vision of society. This technological revolution was followed by a literary one in the 1960s, a time when Mahfouz would generate through a series of short, trenchant, and often comedic novellas, a deeply measured meditation on the experience of collective upheaval and the interpersonal impact of political transformation.

International Journal of Communication, May 29, 2021

Media coverage of protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 26, 2020, tended to ascrib... more Media coverage of protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 26, 2020, tended to ascribe to the demonstrations two faces: One, presented by organizers and supporters, was a decentralized movement for peaceful change; the other was a violent conspiracy for the disruption of order. Good analysis has flowed into the question of domestic media bias in the coverage of Summer 2020’s historical events. Less attention, however, has been directed to the ways foreign media covered the protests. One of the most powerful voices in framing the story of the protests to a global audience was Russia’s statesponsored media behemoth RT. And nowhere was RT’s particular take on the demonstrations more pronounced than its Arabic-language broadcast RT Arabic or RT3. Through the lens of discourse analysis, I focus on a small sample of quintessential reports to explore how RT3 covered Summer 2020’s momentous events, what their reporting tells us about Kremlin disinformation strategies, and how RT3’s coverage of the protests factors into the Kremlin’s greater geopolitical agenda vis-à-vis the Middle East and North Africa.

The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and crea... more The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and creative work on cinema. The originals maybe in any language and come from any period or geographic region. We welcome two types of proposals: (1) a single text such as a journal article, book chapter, or self-contained section of a book that focuses on a particular topic in a unified, coherent way; and (2) a group of smaller texts that are linked thematically, geographically, or otherwise. The total word count of the introduction and translated text(s) should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words in English. One grant-in-aid of $1,000 will be paid to the translator(s) for copyright clearance and as honoraria. Proposals to translate one's own work will not be considered. SCMS members are invited submit proposals, prepared in accordance with the Chicago Style Manual, with the following: 1. Full bibliographical data of the original text(s). 2. The name and credentials of the translator(s). 3. ...

International Journal of Communication, 2020

Amid the bloodshed of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic Stat... more Amid the bloodshed of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) introduced into their repertoire a new tool of war: the handheld camera. Tracing the evolution of the ghazwa, or military expedition aesthetic, in ISI and later ISIS filmmaking, this article explores the way in which the organization’s primary organ of communication, Al-Furqan Media Foundation, expanded from its origins as a documentary film unit to become one of the world’s most potent vehicles of performative violence. Drawing on a comparative frame of reference with other active media units within the greater sphere of Al-Qaeda communications, including the Al-Andalus Establishment for Media Production of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Furqan Media in the Egyptian Sinai, this article examines the manner in which aesthetic prerogatives, intertwined with religious mythology, served to transcend and unite disparate political factions around a common “narrative ide...

Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2019

Philippe-Joseph Salazar's 2017 masterpiece Words Are Weapons poses a fundamental question: Sh... more Philippe-Joseph Salazar's 2017 masterpiece Words Are Weapons poses a fundamental question: Should we read al-Qaeda? Can we teach the aesthetics that made ISIS infamous? Or in studying the phenomenon do we perpetuate its influence? Government and media campaigns to counter falsehoods, take down propaganda, or superimpose interpretation seek to silence the enemy while preserving the presumed sensibilities of their intended audience. Yet such strategy leaves the door open to the infinitely more seductive power of mystery. Like Arendt's work on Eichmann, Salazar's book challenges us to confront the extreme violence of ISIS in its absolute form. What he finds is a mirror onto Western society—a culture of paralysis in the face of danger and indifference in the face of zealotry. The book is arguably the single indispensable work to date for understanding the psychological and communicative complexities of the war formerly known as the “Global War on Terrorism.”

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2018

This article is a study of Ahmad Khaled Tawfik's 2008 best-selling novel Utopia within the contex... more This article is a study of Ahmad Khaled Tawfik's 2008 best-selling novel Utopia within the context of Arabic science fiction, the genre of Arabic literature experiencing a certain renewal in the recent years. The analysis of the novel's themes, motifs, style, language and literary techniques is aimed at understanding its main influences and its place in the development of Arabic science fiction. As a dystopian novel, it is influenced by the respective European tradition while being socially relevant to the problems of today's Egypt as well. The article also offers a brief look at Arabic science fiction in general at the present state of its evolution.

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2017

In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Isla... more In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a wave of satirical production depicting the group flooded the Arab media landscape. Seemingly spontaneous in some instances and tightly measured in others, the Arab comedy offensive paralleled strategic efforts by the United States and its allies to ‘take back the Internet’ from ISIS propagandists. In this essay, I examine the role of aesthetics, broadly, and satire in particular, in the creation and execution of ‘counter-narratives’ in the war against ISIS. Drawing on the pioneering theories of Fred Forest and others, I argue that in the age of digital reproduction, truth-based messaging campaigns underestimate the power of myth in swaying hearts and minds. As a modus of expression conceived as an act of fabrication, satire is poised to counter myth with myth. But artists must balance a very fine line.

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2017

This article examines a corpus of extremist Islamist texts for the period from 2007 to 2012, incl... more This article examines a corpus of extremist Islamist texts for the period from 2007 to 2012, including transcripts of audio and videos produced by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM). Utilizing narrative analysis, we examine the way AQIM used mythic discourse to disseminate its ideology to audiences and to defend its actions and focus on the deployment of longstanding culturally-embedded ‘master narratives’ in fragmentary forms as sense-making devices. In the process, we argue that narrative analysis can provide insights into ideologies and organizations in the Middle East and North African region that may elude other analytical methods.

In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself e... more In the wake of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt’s future Nobel laureate in literature devoted himself exclusively to writing for film. The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz is the first full-length study in English to examine this critical period in the author’s career and to contextualize it within the scope of post-revolutionary Egyptian politics and culture. Before returning to literature in 1959 with his post-revolutionary masterpiece Children of the Alley, Mahfouz wrote or co-wrote some twenty odd scripts, many of them among the most successful in Egyptian history. He did so at a time when film was the country’s second largest export commodity after cotton and the domestic film industry in Egypt the fourth largest in the world. Artistically, his screenplays channeled the ideology of the revolution, often raising themes of oppression and liberation, and almost always within a storyline of criminal transgression. But as he discussed in later articles and interviews, the capacity for film to enumerate the flow of life—through montage, jump cuts, lighting, and close ups—helped him to develop a darker, faster, and more complex vision of society. This technological revolution was followed by a literary one in the 1960s, a time when Mahfouz would generate through a series of short, trenchant, and often comedic novellas, a deeply measured meditation on the experience of collective upheaval and the interpersonal impact of political transformation.

"The appointment of the Minister of Industry, the so-called “technocrat” Mehdi Jomaa, to for... more "The appointment of the Minister of Industry, the so-called “technocrat” Mehdi Jomaa, to form a caretaker government in Tunisia on the eve of the revolution’s third anniversary, threw into stark relief the country’s complex struggle for democracy following the January 14 revolution. The announcement came in the wake of the Islamist party Ennahdha’s sudden renunciation of the Prime Minister’s office in September, ostensibly a sign of cooperation in the face of mounting criticism surrounding the government’s failure to investigate the assassinations of two political opposition figures. A number of Western media outlets, including the New York Times, quickly absorbed the narrative advanced by Ennahdha’s leader and spiritual guide Rachid al-Ghannouchi referring to the appointment of Jomaa as a “yielding of power.” This narrative of concession, however, elides the fact that neither of the Parliament’s largest secular opposition parties supported the vote to appoint Jomaa, or, for that matter, that the vote failed to achieve a majority. Faced with mounting criticism, Ennahdha’s spokesman denied reports in Le Monde from the previous day that the appointment had been directed by lobbying efforts from the U.S. Department of State and the E.U.[1] In other words, Ennahdha leaders defended the appointment as a victory as much as they sold it as a concession. The former lends itself to the long-standing critique on the part of secular pundits within Tunisia that Ennahdha has been playing a long game and is determined to alter the secular nature of the State. The latter suggests that the Islamist party is representative of a democratic majority and envisions a path of moderate conservative governance along the lines of the AKP in Turkey. ""

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2017

In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Isla... more In the summer of 2014, on the heels of the declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a wave of satirical production depicting the group flooded the Arab media landscape. Seemingly spontaneous in some instances and tightly measured in others, the Arab comedy offensive paralleled strategic efforts by the United States and its allies to ‘take back the Internet’ from ISIS propagandists. In this essay, I examine the role of aesthetics, broadly, and satire in particular, in the creation and execution of ‘counter-narratives’ in the war against ISIS. Drawing on the pioneering theories of Fred Forest and others, I argue that in the age of digital reproduction, truth-based messaging campaigns underestimate the power of myth in swaying hearts and minds. As a modus of expression conceived as an act of fabrication, satire is poised to counter myth with myth. But artists must balance a very fine line.

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2023

The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and crea... more The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and creative work on cinema. The originals may be in any language and come from any period or geographic region. We welcome two types of proposals: (1) a single text such as a journal article, book chapter, or self-contained section of a book that focuses on a particular topic in a unified, coherent way; and (2) a group of smaller texts that are linked thematically, geographically, or otherwise.

The total word count of the introduction and translated text(s) should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words in English. One grant-in-aid of $1,000 will be paid to the translator(s) for copyright clearance and as honoraria. Proposals to translate one’s own work will not be considered.

Journal for Cinema and Media Studies , 2021

Consider submitting an original translation for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual t... more Consider submitting an original translation for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual translation/publication award

The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies

The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and crea... more The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies publishes translations of outstanding scholarly and creative work on any area of film or media. The originals may be in any language and come from any period or geographic region. We welcome two types of proposals: (1) a single text such as a journal article, book chapter, or self-contained section of a book that focuses on a particular topic in a unified, coherent way; and (2) a group of smaller texts that are linked thematically, geographically, or otherwise.

The total word count of the introduction and translated text(s) should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words in English. One grant-in-aid of $1,000 will be paid to the translator(s) for copyright clearance and as honoraria. Proposals to translate one’s own work will not be considered.

Jadaliyya, 2019

(NG): 25 January 2011. I was living in downtown Cairo with a grant to research the literary fallo... more (NG): 25 January 2011. I was living in downtown Cairo with a grant to research the literary fallout of the 1952 revolution. The uprising against Mubarak swept in and "swept me off my feet." Like a lot of us, I have been writing about the experience ever since. But this book is about something slightly different. It is about misinformation and how major world powers used the Arab uprisings to fashion their own political agendas; how domestic regimes capitalized on their alliances abroad; and how media became a weapon of war in the post-revolutionary struggle for power. Its seed was the sense of an extreme disparity between the rhetoric I was hearing on the ground in Egypt-outside of Tahrir-and how entrenched the narrative of the uprising had become among people who were consuming news about the uprising abroad. I became entranced with the paradoxical notion that Information and Communication Technology had both enabled more voices and consolidated the narratives through which news and history are retold. I Jadaliyya