The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment
Mass Culture and Modernity in the Middle East
Raphael Cormack editor Hala Auji editor Alaaeldin Mahmoud editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:14th Dec '23
£85.00
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This book asks: what does the Arab nahda (renaissance) look like, viewed from the perspective of popular culture and “ordinary people”?
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.
This volume offers a series of fascinating case studies that explores the performance of popular culture in different genres across the Arab world during a time of great change. Grounded in some exciting source material, it raises the curtain on popular entertainment that ranges from its local specific and subversive dimension to its wider regional importance as part of the Arab nahda. -- Anthony Gorman * Senior Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Edinburgh, UK *
Auji, Cormack and Mahmoud succeed in curating a groundbreaking contribution to Nahdah studies. Commuting between canonical and lesser-known texts and authors, Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment originally considers the intersection of textuality and print culture with the materiality of popular culture. Dwelling in the seams between the anxieties and stabilizations of modern Arab national subjectivities. This collection rewards us with powerful new insights into the centrality of staging, performance, and negotiating gender and class positionalities within the Arab Nahda. * Stephen Sheehi, Professor, William and Mary , USA *
By focusing on the production and reception of popular culture --theater, cabaret, music, film and performance-- from Iraq to North Africa, The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment marks a groundbreaking and refreshing new approach to the study of the Nahda from a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective. By turns erudite, thought-provoking and entertaining, the essays in this important new volume are essential reading for scholars and students of the global cultural histories of modernity. * Samah Selim, Professor, Rutgers University, USA *
ISBN: 9780755647408
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages