This book studies contemporary Arab political poetry, providing insights into how modern Arab media forms are shaped by language and culture. By examining lives and works of individual poets, singers, and audiences, it shows how tribalism is a resource for critical reform when expressed in tropes of community, place, person, and history.

The Huthi rebels in Yemen are a resistance movement going back decades. Their revolution against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2015-and the subsequent proxy war between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Huthis-has brought absolute devastation to the country. But who are the Huthis and how can we understand the group away from armed conflict and war? What has motivated their social movement to fundamentally re-shape Yemen, and what are the group's local and regional ambitions? This book provides the first comprehensive critical analysis dedicated to the Huthis. Across four parts and 17 chapters, the book examines how the movement is challenging traditional religious authority, re-shaping tribal values and roles in Yemen, constructing new collective memories and identities, and infusing Yemen's mediascape with their ideological creed. In examining the movement's specific ways of thinking and beliefs, the book also highlights its foreign policy within a regional policy of resistance to the United States, and it points towards what its impact on both Yemen and the security of the Arab Gulf region will be. The book brings together the leading experts on Yemen from diverse disciplines to provide readers with a nuanced and multi-layered approach to understanding the Huthi movement.

Since the turn of the twentieth century the dramatic rise of mass media has profoundly transformed music practices in the Arab world. Music has adapted to successive forms of media disseminationfrom phonograph cylinders to MP3seach subjected to the political and economic forces of its particular era and region. Carried by mass media, the broader culture of Arab music has been thoroughly transformed as well. Simultaneously, mass mediated music has become a powerful social force. While parallel processes have unfolded worldwide, their implications in the Arabic-speaking world have thus far received little scholarly attention. This provocative volume features sixteen new essays examining these issues, especially televised music and the controversial new genre of the music video. Perceptive voicesboth emerging and establishedrepresent a wide variety of academic disciplines. Incisive essays by Egyptian critics display the textures of public Arabic discourse to an English readership. Authors address the key issues of contemporary Arab societygender and sexuality, Islam, class, economy, power, and nationas refracted through the culture of mediated music. Interconnected by a web of recurrent concepts, this collection transcends music to become an important resource for the study of contemporary Arab society and culture. Contributors: Wael Abdel Fattah, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Moataz Abdel Aziz, Tamim Al-Barghouti, Mounir Al Wassimi, Walter Armbrust, Elisabeth Cestor, Hani Darwish, Walid El Khachab, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, James Grippo, Patricia Kubala, Katherine Meizel, Zein Nassar, Ibrahim Saleh, Laith Ulaby.

'Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field' is the first attempt to explore ways of conceptualising and theorising the nascent field of Arab Cultural Studies. It reflects and engages in an interdisciplinary discussion on the different facets of Arab cultural studies, including gender, economy, history, epistemology, language, method, politics, literary and cultural criticism, institutionalization, popular culture, creativity and much more. The book presents a meta-narrative about how scholars have thus far thought and re-thought the field. It brings together prominent and emerging experts, writing from both Arab and Western academia, to engage with key complex, epistemic and methodological questions and to articulate in the meantime the new kinds of language and hermeneutics necessary for the appropriation of an historically conscious and coherent field of scientific enquiry into contemporary Arab media, culture and society.

This book seeks to both showcase and further develop innovative research and debates on contemporary Arab cultural production. Popular culture in the form of cinema, popular music, literature, visual media and cyber-cultures, both local and imported, enjoy a central role in Arab cultural life, and the contributors to this innovative collection showcase the tremendous cultural output emerging from the Arab world. They present sensitive, conceptual readings whilst remaining mindful of the place of this work within a wider framework that seeks to prevent isolationist readings of cultural phenomena. Making sense of the place of culture in the Arab world, and agreeing upon a broadly recognisable and commonly accepted set of terms within which to discuss this output, is a new and urgent challenge. Arab Cultural Studies aspires to understand, communicate and theorise these forms. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics comprises 22 chapters encompassing various aspects in the study of Arabic dialects within their sociolinguistic context. This is a novel volume, which not only includes the traditional topics in variationist sociolinguistics, but also links the sociolinguistic enterprise to the history of Arabic and to applications of sociolinguistics beyond the theoretical treatment of variation. Newly formed trends, with an eye to future research, form the backbone of this volume. With contributions from an international pool of researchers, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of Arabic sociolinguistics, as well as to linguists interested in a concise, rounded view of the field.

A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East presents a comprehensive overview of current trends and future directions in anthropological research and activism in the modern Middle East. Named as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles of 2016 Offers critical perspectives on the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical goals of anthropology in the Middle East Analyzes the conditions of cultural and social transformation in the Middle Eastern region and its relations with other areas of the world Features contributions by top experts in various Middle East anthropological specialties Features in-depth coverage of issues drawn from religion, the arts, language, politics, political economy, the law, human rights, multiculturalism, and globalization