upcoming: Wednesday, October 22
This talk takes up the question: what role should aesthetic analysis play in the critical study of media today? It refracts this question through the issues raised by examining digital platforms in the Global South, exploring how the contradictions that shape the infrastructure and political economy of platform and streaming media raise old questions about aesthetics in new ways. Drawing on current research in the Arab world, I show how popular sensibilities and state actors become invested in cultural form, and situate them within the temporal and spatial processes in which media play a key part. I examine case studies of the 2019 Uprising in Lebanon and the ongoing Saudi Neom megaproject, unpacking the unevenness of contemporary media.
October 22 | Raah Lab (FB 630.17), 1250 Rue Guy | 5:30 PM
This talk is free and open to all.
Hatim El-Hibri is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies. His research and teaching interests focus on global and transnational media studies, visual culture studies, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban studies, television studies, and media theory and history. His first book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure (Duke University Press, 2021) was awarded the Jane Jacobs Book Award by the Urban Communication Foundation. He is currently working on a book titled Streaming the Crisis.