Sanabel Abdelrahman wonders why the 1001 Nights hero Sindibād is constantly evoked in Arabic trap music, and how? What is the connection between the post-2011 Sindibād of the trap and rap scene to the one of bygone decades?
By Rasha Chatta. In a region where authoritarian and patriarchal regimes have held the monopoly on what circulates publicly and where spaces of contestation are under scrutiny, graphic narratives or qisas musawwara as they are referred to in the Arabic language—alongside other popular arts such as graffiti or street art—have carved out a new arena of dissent that was made possible by the hopes for social and political changes instigated in the wave of the so-called Arab Spring.
By Khadija Mohamed Embaby and Amira Mittermaier. In times of profound uncertainty, what does God offer to believers? And how does uncertainty affect believers’ ideas about, and relations to, God?
By Randa Abou Bakr, Ulrike Freitag, and Sarah Jurkiewicz. The uprisings in the Arab region in 2010/11 took many observers of the political scene by surprise, given the authoritarian nature of most regimes in the area. However, the roots and reflections of these uprisings can be found in the social, cultural, and artistic spheres of these locations, as we argue in our book.
Sana Tannoury-Karam is a historian of the modern Middle East, writing on the intellectual history of the Left in the Levant. She is a EUME fellow 2020-2021 at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
Mohammed Bamyeh is a Sociologist from the University of Pittsburgh and has been working with the Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME) program of...
By Tarek El-Ariss When looking at the Arab world since 2010, we experience both exhilaration and complete despair. Whereas the Arab uprisings initially brought about great hope with the initial...
This article is part of the TRAFO series “Emerging Topics. Insights from ‘Behind the Scenes’”. Today, we put the spotlight on the symposium, Revisiting Archive in the Aftermath of Revolution,...
By Behrooz Moazami The 1979 revolution in Iran is often identified as a pivotal moment in the Islamization of political and social movements in the Middle East, representing the forceful...
Dina Mansour-Ille, currently a reserach fellow with the Orient-Institute Beirut (OIB), holds a PhD in “Politics, Human Rights and Sustainability” with a specialization in political economy and human rights from...
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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