"What was popular entertainment like for everyday Arab societies in Middle Eastern cities during the long nineteenth century? In what ways did café culture, theatre, illustrated periodicals, cinema, cabarets, and festivals serve as key forms of popular entertainment for Arabic-speaking audiences, many of whom were uneducated and striving to contend with modernity's anxiety-inducing realities? Studies on the 19th to mid-20th century's transformative cultural movement known as the Arab nahda (renaissance), have largely focussed on concerns with nationalism, secularism, and language, often told from the perspective of privileged groups. Highlighting overlooked aspects of this movement, this book shifts the focus away from elite circles to quotidian audiences. Its ten contributions range in scope, from music and visual media to theatre and popular fiction. Paying special attention to networks of movement and exchange across Arab societies in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Morocco, this book heeds the call for 'translocal/transnational' cultural histories, while contributing to timely global studies on gender, sexuality, and morality. Focusing on the often-marginalized frequenters of cafés, artist studios, cinemas, nightclubs, and the streets, it expands the remit of who participated in the nahda and how they did"--

What was popular entertainment like for everyday Arab societies in Middle Eastern cities during the long nineteenth century? In what ways did café culture, theatre, illustrated periodicals, cinema, cabarets, and festivals serve as key forms of popular entertainment for Arabic-speaking audiences, many of whom were uneducated and striving to contend with modernity's anxiety-inducing realities? Studies on the 19th to mid-20th century's transformative cultural movement known as the Arab nahda (renaissance), have largely focussed on concerns with nationalism, secularism, and language, often told from the perspective of privileged groups. Highlighting overlooked aspects of this movement, this book shifts the focus away from elite circles to quotidian audiences. Its ten contributions range in scope, from music and visual media to theatre and popular fiction. Paying special attention to networks of movement and exchange across Arab societies in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Morocco, this book heeds the call for 'translocal/transnational' cultural histories, while contributing to timely global studies on gender, sexuality, and morality. Focusing on the often-marginalized frequenters of cafés, artist studios, cinemas, nightclubs, and the streets, it expands the remit of who participated in the nahda and how they did.

"An anthology of Arabic texts and English translations of works from the Arab Renaissance (Nahda) on modernity, language, gender, transnationalism, literary criticism, politics, travel, social justice, technology, history, and commerce. The edition is designed for the classroom, with an introduction, translator's note, and textual notes for students and teachers"--

A vibrant portrait of the talented and entrepreneurial women who defined an era in Cairo. One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry. Raphael Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newspapers); nightclub singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya (the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company) and her great rival, Oum Kalthoum (still venerated for her soulful lyrics); and other fabulous female stars of the interwar period, a time marked by excess and unheard-of freedom of expression. Buffeted by crosswinds of colonialism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, “religious” and “secular” values, patriarchy and feminism, this new generation of celebrities offered a new vision for women in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire saw a crucial change in attitudes towards sexuality. Notions of 'respectability', 'propriety' and 'sexual morality' were being transformed in literary and cultural discourses, a shift that was related to the gradual rise in anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism. However, contemporary Orientalists such as Sir Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence were oblivious to certain aspects of this process of cultural reconfiguration. While accounts of male-love poetry (ghazal al-mudhakkar) were being gradually expurgated from the Arab literary heritage, elaborate narratives of Oriental homoerotic desire distinctively characterise the encounters of both Burton and Lawrence with the Arab East. By comparing their literary and autobiographical accounts of the Arab Orient with contemporary Arabic literature, Feras Alkabani is able to expose this critical disparity in cross-cultural portrayals of sexual morality and homoerotic desire. Alkabani relates the conflicting agendas of contemporary Orientalists and Arab scholars to the shifts in international imperial power relations and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire. His detailed comparative study reveals the significance of homoerotic desire within Orientalist and Arab literary discourses at a time when the meaning and connotations of poetic male-love were undergoing a critical change in Arab culture and literature. It will prove invaluable for those researching Orientalism, nationalism, imperialism and manifestations of homoerotic desire in the fin-de-siècle Middle East.

In a postmodern world of globalised capital, how does the concept of Orientalism inform understandings of cultural exchange? In this detailed and wide-ranging examination, Arab popular culture is explored in its relation to American culture and capitalism. Offering new insights on Edward Said's longstanding theoretical lens, Consumerist Orientalism presents an updated conceptual framework through which to understand the intercultural relationship between East and West, exploring a wide range of cultural production; from an Oscar-nominated Jordanian film to Turkish-Arab soap operas and Arab-diaspora rap. Drawing on key contemporary critical thinkers and in-depth cultural analysis, the relationship between capitalism, postmodernism and Orientalism is explored with fresh insights, making this essential reading for students of Middle Eastern culture, globalisation and postcolonial studies.

Intended for scholars of film and the contemporary Middle East, this title provides a comprehensive overview of cinema in the Arab world, tracing the industry's development, since colonial times. It analyzes the ambiguous relationship with commercial western cinema, and the effect of Egyptian market dominance in the region.