A special issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication will be dedicated to the topic ‘towards a Palestinian cultural studies’.
A call for contributions has been made for the special issue, which will focus on Palestinian cultural expressions as domains of power and/or struggle as they articulate with broader social, political, and economic processes. As scholars in the traditional social sciences and in area studies begin to open to the opportunity of studying popular culture as a site of (serious) political/social expression, and as scholars in disciplines such as anthropology and media/cultural studies widen their gaze to analyze the relationship of Palestinians (no matter their physical location) to different media and cultural expressions and processes, this is an appropriate time to theorize what may be called a ‘Palestinian cultural studies.’ The special edited volume calls on scholars rooted in various intellectual theories and methodologies to submit abstracts based on work that situates, problematizes and/or theorizes Palestinian culture (production, consumption, distribution) across historical and geographical spaces. Here, Palestine is envisioned as beyond a national and geographical paradigm, and culture is open-ended to include any means of individual or collective expression.
Possible topics include:
- The politics of Palestinian popular culture
- Palestinian media industry and institutions (in the Territories and elsewhere)
- Media-use among Palestinian populations (ethnographies, policies, political economy)
- Refugees, exiles, occupied peoples, and negotiations of identity
- Palestinian public spaces: landmarks, memorials, parks and national memory
- Palestinian occupied spaces: checkpoints, by-pass roads, separation wall, borders
- Alternative media: graffiti, cartoons, blogs, cassette tapes
- Theater, performance, live music, rap, street art, demonstrations
- Nationalism, modernity, and Islam
- Social and religious movements in/and the media
- Physical and virtual spaces of Palestine
- Gendered discourses
For more information, see the news item at H-Net via the external link below.
The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication (MEJCC) is a peer-reviewed journal published twice a year by Brill. MEJCC provides a transcultural academic sphere that engages Middle Eastern and Western scholars in a critical dialogue about culture, communication and politics in the Middle East. It provides a forum for debate on the region’s encounter with modernity and the ways in which this is reshaping people’s everyday experiences. MEJCC's long-term objective is to provide a vehicle for developing the field of study into communication and culture in the Middle East. The Journal encourages work that reconceptualizes dominant paradigms and theories of communication to take into account local cultural particularities.