Browsing by Subject "Lebanon"

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Abu Maher al Yamani and the unheralded Palestinian leadership in 1950s Lebanon
(2015-05) Issa, Philip Thabet; Di-Capua, Yoav; Ali, Kamran A
Ahmad abu Maher al Yamani, born in 1924 in Suhmata, Palestine, was one of the foremost refugee leaders in 1950s and '60s Lebanon. A school principal by occupation, Yamani built and directed the leading civic associations in exile, including the UNRWA Teachers' Association, the popular committees of the camps, the al Shabab al 'Arabi al Filastini branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement, and the Union of Palestinian Workers. These associations asserted the interests of poor and formerly peasant refugees to UNRWA and Lebanese authorities, and they laid the foundations for the armed struggle. This biography describes the maturation of camp organization with more color. It also traces continuity between the social transformations of the Mandate era and camp society in the diaspora. The processes in Palestine that drew peasants to continuing education, and then to urban areas and to wage labor, and to mass politics and national identification -- these refined Yamani into a young leader. Most of all, this biography foregrounds grassroots civic leadership among Palestinians in exile.
The advertising construction of identity in Lebanese television
(2010-08) Nasr, Assem; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-; Straubhaar, Joseph D.; Kackman, Michael; Kraidy, Marwan M.; Kumar, Shanti
The Middle East saw much social change in recent tumultuous decades. On one hand, some communities embraced Westernness as part of the inevitable path to development and modernization. On the other hand, there were communities that resisted global trends that were mostly dominated by the West. The latter deemed these trends as a threat to native cultures, religious groups, and local traditions. This made the Arab world a ground for constant redefinition of the meaning of identity. Of the countries in the region undergoing a turbulent debate over what constitutes national identity, Lebanon serves as a good example. Ever since its independence, Lebanon was a nation-state with no sense of nationality to unite its people. As some communities saw themselves more francophone than Arab, others felt a close connection to a pan-Arab nation. Arguably, the Lebanese people found themselves amidst a tension between the two poles. Defining one’s identity required a negotiation between the two extremes. Not only did this negotiation demand a thorough investigation of one’s beliefs, social network, and history, but it also necessitated a diligent ‘performance’ of identity. An individual represented her identity by habits and expressions that she associated with that particular identity. The study at hand is an exploration of the relationship between identity and consumption in the Lebanese society. This project applies a unique approach in that it considers the producers’ agency in the construction of identity. Taking television advertising as a site for inquiry, the study explores how commercial advertisers utilize the tension between the local and the non-local to promote the consumption of the advertised products. Through exploring the values that educate advertising producers’ choices in creating text and meaning, this study applies theories of globalization, postcolonial studies, and consumer behavior through which advertisers manifest an ambivalence of identity. Therefore, by taking Lebanon as an example and focusing on advertising, this study contributes to the debates of globalization and the Arab world by invoking questions of producers’ agency in producing identity references through attitudes, behaviors, and social status associated with the featured products.
Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938-1947
(2016-05) Leidy, Joseph Walker; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; El-Ariss, Tarek
Antun Saadeh (1904-1949), the founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, has often been labelled a political and ideological imitator of European fascism. This association has led many to gloss over an important feature of his career: the mahjar, or Arab diaspora, particularly in Argentina and Brazil where he spent much of his life. This thesis contends that Saadeh's illiberalism emerged not as a mere echo of European fascism but from a diverse set of ideas and experiences. Central among these was his experiences and perceptions of the mahjar, which became a symbolic foil for Saadeh’s Syrian Social Nationalism. On the one hand, Saadeh conceived of the mahjar in terms that paralleled the historicist ideal of Phoenician trading colonies in Lebanese nationalism. However, Saadeh also had reservations about the dedication of migrant communities to the national cause. Reflecting this ambiguity, Arabic-language periodicals published in Argentina show how Saadeh was received in 1940s migrant society, where he found both supporters and detractors. There, Saadeh’s initially positive reception was followed by a turn against him in public debates. Nonetheless, Saadeh and his party had some success in establishing their movement in the mahjar, where younger supporters connected Saadeh to local discourses of national liberation. Viewing Saadeh from the perspective of his transnational influences and migrant audiences allows us to see him not as an exception in midcentury Levantine politics but within the wider context of nationalist politics in Lebanon, Syria, and the mahjar at the end of the Mandate era.
Digging through time: psychogeographies of occupation
(2015-12) Simblist, Noah Leon; Reynolds, Ann Morris; El-Ariss, Tarek; Mulder, Stephennie; Di-Capua, Yoav; Flaherty, George
This dissertation is about the relationship between contemporary art and politics in the case of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Specifically, I look at the ways that artists have dealt with the history of this region and its impact on the present, using four moments as the subject of the following chapters: ancient Palestine, the Holocaust, The nakba, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The historiographical impulse has a particular resonance for artists making work about the Middle East, a political space where competing historical narratives are the basis for disagreements about sovereignty. I focus on works by Avi Mograbi, Gilad Efrat, Ayreen Anastas, Amir Yatziv, Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, Khaled Hourani, Dor Guez, Campus in Camps, and Akram Zaatari. A number of patterns emerge when we look at how these artists approach history. One is the tendency for artists to act like historians. As a subset of this tendency is the archival impulse, wherein artists use found photographs, film or documents to intervene in normative representations of history. Another is for artists to act like archaeologists, digging up repressed histories. Another is to commemorate a traumatic event in a way that rejects traditional forms of memorialization such as monuments. At the core of each chapter are examples of artistic practices that use conversation as a medium. I analyze these conversations about history as a dialogical practice and argue that this methodology offers a uniquely productive opportunity to work through the ideologies embedded within the psychogeographies of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Within these conversations and other aesthetic structures, I argue that these artists emphasize the all too common challenge in producing new forms of civic imagination – the tendency to address historical trauma though repetition compulsion and melancholia. They react to this challenge by engaging collective memory, producing counter-memories and, in some cases, produce counterpublics.
Divine victory : uses of the 2006 war in Hezbollah Muqawama rhetoric
(2015-05) Higgins, Patrick Donovan; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; Harlow, Barbara
For countless commentators on contemporary Middle East affairs, the 33-day war in 2006 between the State of Israel and the Lebanese paramilitary organization Hezbollah represented a turning point in modern military affairs. For Hezbollah in particular, the war presented unique challenges. While on the one hand the organization demonstrated unprecedented military prowess for an Arab military outfit against Israel, the effects of the Israeli bombing and land invasion on civilian life in Lebanon were catastrophic. The war presented Hezbollah with a crisis and an opportunity, of which both prospects the group's leadership was well aware. In the aftermath of the war, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah presented the war as a "Divine Victory" in his speeches, applying to its legacy-formulation three rhetorical registers: the theological register, which emphasizes belief in God as the route to military endurance, as well as the sacredness of martyrdom as rectification for the futility of the corporeal universe; the national register, which emphasizes the integrity of Lebanon as a coherent nation-state; and the international register, which emphasizes the importance of solidarities among the colonized and disinherited populations of the world. All three of these registers have served as important hallmarks of Hezbollah's unique thought and resistance culture; in Nasrallah's speeches, they are assembled in new ways and incorporated into the development of a narrative around the 2006 War to demonstrate that Israel and empire itself are capable of suffering major military defeats. The employment of this rhetoric signals deeper understandings of Hezbollah thought and policy, including more recent and controversial actions such as its incursion into the Civil War in Syria.
Echoes of oppression : a filmic analysis of African women in Lebanon’s Kafāla system
(2024-05) Prentiss, Asia ; Seyedsayamdost, Nahid
The kafāla system is an exploitative practice of sponsoring unskilled laborers and is most commonly found in Gulf countries and Lebanon. This practice became popular in Lebanon during the 1970s and remains a common practice in contemporary society. The Lebanese Ministry of Labour estimates that more than 100,000 migrant workers live and work within the country. Among this population, the majority of these workers are women, and a substantial number of these women are of African origin. Previous scholarship on the kafāla system has identified that African women face distinct challenges tied to their identity as Black women. Because of this, this thesis uses film as a site of analysis to explore variations in film representations of African women who work as domestic workers in Lebanon. This thesis also uses film to understand how filmmakers utilized their works to advance discourse on this subject. This thesis analyzes a collection of films produced from 2016 to 2020 that feature robust representations of African domestic workers in Lebanon. To argue the following: 1) when African domestic workers are allowed to represent themselves, they depict themselves in a more nuanced light which reflects their identity outside of their job, and 2) genre and film style influences the representation of African domestic workers, as it affects the message and final product filmmakers disseminate to the public. This work aims to raise further awareness of African women working in the kafāla system by utilizing a multidisciplinary approach that previous scholarship has not extensively explored.
Ecstatic feedback : toward an ethics of audition in the contemporary literary arts of the Mediterranean
(2014-12) Raizen, Michal; Grumberg, Karen; El-Ariss, Tarek; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Seeman, Sonia; Atwood, Blake
Ecstatic Feedback explores narrative and thematic engagements with the concept of “audition” in works from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Morocco. My use of the term audition encompasses the act of listening, the trials and tribulations of hearing, and the performative aspects of lending an ear. The locale of Ecstatic Feedback is the contemporary Mediterranean, a designation that reflects both the geographical and linguistic orientation of the works discussed and the emergent disciplinary interest in Mediterranean Studies. The regional specificity of this project is framed by my discussion of ṭarab, a musical phenomenon akin to ecstasy. I argue that ṭarab, as a musical form with a culturally-specific contextual base and a sui generis communicative mode capable of producing context, points to an acoustic geography that predates current sociopolitical mappings of the Mediterranean. In its literary and cinematic iterations, ṭarab presents a challenge to compartmentalized geopolitical and cultural visions of a Mediterranean structured around divisions such as secular/sacred, premodern/modern, or Mashriq/Maghreb. The works discussed in Ecstatic Feedback use ṭarab as a narrative structure, casting it at the same time as a way of rethinking the historical traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first century Mediterranean. Emile Habibi’s vignettes The Sextet of the Six Days (1968); Hoda Barakat’s novel Disciples of Passion (1993) and her series of essays The Stranger’s Letters (2004); Eran Kolirin’s film The Band’s Visit (2007); and Elia Suleiman’s film The Time That Remains (2009) all make explicit references to the world of ṭarab and its practitioners. Edmond El Maleh’s A Thousand Years, One Day (1986) situates ṭarab more abstractly, as a concept with tremendous performative and communicative potential in both its popular and mystical iterations. With a focus on Arab Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and exiles of the Lebanese Civil War, my project attends to the processes that underwrite a literary and cinematic intervention into the regional soundscape, with its attendant silences and elisions. By foregrounding instances of ṭarab and exploring the intersubjectivity inherent in the dynamic between muṭrib (a performer who elicits ṭarab) and listener, these diverse texts combine to highlight a line of cultural-regional poetics based on audition.
The family and the making of women's rights activism in Lebanon
(2009-05) Stephan, Rita Toufic; Charrad, M. (Mounira)
This research explores how Lebanese women's rights activists use their kinship system to pursue citizenship rights and political recognition. Building on social movements, social capital, and feminist theories, I argue that Lebanese women's rights activists leverage support from their kin groups and adhere to the behavioral norms set by the kinship system in order to gain access, build capacity and advance their movement's goals and strategies. In investigating the impact of being embedded in--or autonomous from--kinship structure on activism, my research suggests that Lebanese women's rights activists interact with their kin groups at three levels. Firstly, at the level of becoming an activist, some women obtain direct support and encouragement from their nuclear and extended family, while others rise through alternative networks such as membership in a political party or a professional union. At the personal strategies level, some activists utilize their family support and kinship networks to establish their activist identities and facilitate their civic engagement, while others use collegial and professional networks. Finally, on the organizational level, women's rights organizations pursue women's empowerment in the context of their role in the family, dissolving the divide between women's rights in the sphere of legal equality and women's rights within the family. Women's relation to kinship is significant in explaining how they form their activist identity and construct their activism, regardless whether they use embedded or autonomous strategies. Activists receive empowerment and support from the family in advancing their goals and consider family members as important forces in shaping their journeys to activism. In the same vein, the kinship system contributes to determining actors' social status at the outset; its networks potentially grant activists access to the public sphere; and its name and ties endows activists with public trust and respect. Lebanese activists expand on the capabilities provided for them by their kin groups to enhance women’s status in their public as well as private roles.
“It is ‘force majeure’” : the abrupt boycott movements of the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympic Games
(2017-05-05) Schelfhout, Sam Thomas; Hunt, Thomas M.
Why do countries boycott the Olympic Games? The nature of boycott movements in the Olympic Games has been covered extensively in academic literature, and scholars rely on a limited set of cases to determine how and why these boycotts occur. The 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, experienced a flurry of boycotts from delegations from seven different countries in the weeks leading up to the opening ceremonies, resulting in a scramble by the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) to ask each delegation to reconsider. In his first Summer Olympic Games as the president of the I.O.C., Avery Brundage was immediately thrust into the troubling relationship between politics and sport with the outbreak of two major conflicts, the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. In addition, the problem of the “Two Chinas” had affected the delegations from Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, continuing the issue of Chinese representation leading up to the Games in Melbourne. This paper uses a combination of archival research and discourse analysis to analyze the motivations and reasoning of each of the delegations that expressed desire to boycott the 1956 Summer Olympic Games. Primary source material was taken from the Avery Brundage Collection, which includes correspondence, minutes, reports, photographs, clippings, scrapbooks, artifacts, certificates, awards, honors, publications concerning Brundage’s service during his tenure as the president of the I.O.C. Newspaper articles and Associated Press reports are also included, which provide first-hand accounts of the events that transpired before, during and after the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympic Games. This paper ultimately argues that while political motivations provided a plausible excuse for abstaining from attending the Games, underlying reasons ranging from transportation to financial issues were the main deterrent for countries choosing to withdraw their teams from participating. Given that the 1956 Summer Olympic Games were the first to be held outside of Europe, delegations struggled sending a full team to Melbourne to compete due to financial constraints. Using the specter of international conflict to shroud their true intentions of attending, the countries of Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq each abstained from attending the Games.
Land Reform in the Middle East
(International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1977) Askari, Hossein; Cummings, John Thomas; Harik, Bassam
Letter to H.B. Stenzel from Thomas H. Withers on 1938-07-29
(1938-07-29) Withers, Thomas H.
Letter to Harold E. Vokes from H.B. Stenzel on 1941-02-11
(1941-02-11) Stenzel, Henryk B.
On witnessing : postwar cinema in Iran and Lebanon
(2013-08) Kim, Somy; Ghanoonparvar, M. R. (Mohammad R.); Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; El-Ariss, Tarek; Ali, Samer; Ramirez-Berg, Charles; Aghaie, Kamran
This dissertation examines the particularly dynamic postwar cinema of Iran and Lebanon (1988-2007). Through a comparative approach, I consider the cinematic narratives that emerged from this critical period of national reconstruction in these two Middle Eastern countries. I argue that the precarious condition of the postwar, globalizing period allowed the untold stories of class and gender for instance, to appear from within the fabric of the discourse of war storytelling in particular ways. By comparing these two contexts I am able to draw from a shared visuality, and specifically the visual trope of the martyr that was popularized in Iran and Lebanon in the war periods. In Chapter One I trace the formidable production of the visual rhetoric of war in Iran and Lebanon through posters and cinema. In Chapter Two I highlight the emergence of an auteur filmmaking of the globalizing period in the Middle East, which emphasized the instability of representation and ‘true’ witnessing. In Chapter Three, I argue that an aesthetics of performing witnessing illuminated the class issues troubling cities like Tehran and Beirut. Finally, in Chapter Four I show how the generic conventions of popular genres like comedy and musical allowed for otherwise controversial social issues to be articulated in war films.
Resistance is no longer futile : women's rights in Lebanon
(2015-05) Partain, Laura Paige; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-; Atwood, Blake
This thesis focuses on the current state of women's rights in Lebanon. Due to gender inequality, wider systems of violence, and institutionalized methods of disenfranchisement such as Lebanese personal status laws and the Kafala system, a sponsorship system for migrant domestic labor, women and children are most vulnerable to violence. Despite these pervasive systems of patriarchal dominance, it has thus far been difficult to fight gender-based violence in Lebanon because the country promotes a superficial appearance of equality. This thesis discusses how the women's rights organization KAFA, meaning "Enough" in Arabic, could ignite a women's movement in a country, like Lebanon, that has experienced limited progress for women and prolonged national violence. My thesis begins with an interview with the Communication Director of KAFA, followed by a discussion of KAFA's different campaign strategies to engage the state apparatus, the public sphere, and the migrant and refugee community. I then illustrate how KAFA implements its campaigns through mass media and other visual culture, incorporating audience responses to these strategies into my discussion. Finally, I analyze these campaigns strategies in relation to each other, focusing on the implications of the audiences' responses. I argue in this thesis that in order for KAFA to launch a women's rights movement under current social and political conditions in KAFA, it must first employ strategic campaigns to confront forms of gender-based violence at the state and community levels, appealing to a wide audience and building support across campaigns. Constructing webs of activist support across campaigns is crucial for combatting patriarchal oppression regarding socioeconomic and nationalist differences that a part of KAFA's audience reproduces in their responses to campaigns. These issues are particularly evident in responses regarding those working under the Kafala system, a form of modern day slavery. KAFA uses these contentious responses, however, as an opportunity to educate and raise awareness, educate, and prevent gender-based violence. KAFA's campaign strategies have led to an increase in volunteers and activists participating in KAFA, which I argue places the organization in a unique place to build a women's rights movement in Lebanon.
Strangers from here : local politics, frame displacement, and the case of Beirut Madinati
(2023-01-02) Younes, Abraham Maan; Charrad, M. (Mounira)
Attempts to introduce new collective action frames can prove challenging for activists whose mission, goals, and campaign tactics appear novel or unfamiliar to local audiences. Even if organized and directed by area residents, grassroots campaigns whose basis for political association diverges widely from the cultural and institutional norms of their locale are at risk of being perceived by residents as elitist, unrealistic, or foreign-run. How do members of the public respond to activists whose vision, language, and outreach strategies do not align with dominant collective action frames in their locale? What tactics do activists use to counter doubt, confusion, and suspicion from the public as they attempt to introduce a new collective action frame where they live? I focus these questions on the case of Beirut Madinati (BM) or ‘Beirut, My City’, a 2016 electoral campaign in Beirut, Lebanon. While political contests in Lebanon normally center around sectarian membership and kinship-based solidarity, Beirut Madinati organizers adopted a secular, rights-based platform, with a framework centered in principles of democratic universalism and economic justice. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with 6 campaign organizers, 3 street protestors, and 6 voters, I highlight the challenges, tensions, and strategic dilemmas confronting Beirut Madinati activists as they attempt to shift the dominant collective action frame in Beirut from kinship-based solidarity to democratic universalism. From interview data, I identify three patterns of public reaction to new collective action frames—disbelief, frame confusion, and reversion after receptivity—and three tactics that campaign organizers employed to counter doubt and suspicion from the public—expertise, mirroring, and frame narrowing.
Syria and Saudi Arabia in post-Ta'if Lebanon
(2011-05) Stedem, Kelly Alicia; Henry, Clement M., 1937-; Ali, Kamran
The tiny nation-state of Lebanon has been marred by political instability and violence over the past 35 years. Most scholars blame the consociational structure of the bureaucratic system as the main culprit for the precarious state of the republic. It is an understatement to say that the delicate power-sharing balance divided between the Christian and Muslim sects has been one of the most detrimental elements to government stability and socioeconomic development. Underneath these sectarian affiliations, however, lie numerous patronage systems all vying for power and control over the Lebanese system. These systems not only act to support their Lebanese sectarian leader, but many have reached across the border and found the open hands of foreign powers. The actions of these foreign entities have also constituted a divisive role in undermining the unification of the nation into a cohesive and functioning state, particularly during the post-civil war time period. The end of the 15 year civil war through the passage of the National Reconciliation Accord heralded in a sense of promise for a future free of war and political mismanagement through the abolition of the consociational system. This promise, however, has yet to be fulfilled. This thesis is an examination into the role and impact of Syrian and Saudi Arabian patronage ties in the Lebanese system. By looking at the states through the actions of their clients we can come to a better understanding of both why and how the goals of Ta'if have yet to be achieved and potentially come to understand the needs facing Lebanon's future.
The Syrian conflict in Lebanese media
(2013-05) Carr, Daryl Thomas; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-
This thesis examines how three Lebanese satellite stations and two print journals cover the Syrian civil war. It is useful to analyze Lebanon’s news programming because the relative lack of regulation over its media allows them to take drastically different political stances. Syria and Lebanon’s unique political and cultural connection causes the conflict to permeate both the debates over foreign and domestic policy. My paper is significant because it elucidates the specific ways in which the Syrian crisis divides the already fractured Lebanese populace. My analysis reveals how regional news sources give meaning to the Arab Spring using language drawn from local historical and political experiences.
The sheikh of Princeton : Philip Hitti and the tides of history
(2015-05) Brodski, Yehonathan; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; Hsu, Madeleine; Donner, Fred; Garfield, Seth; Karam, John
When Princeton University launched an Oriental Department in 1927, the school broke convention in two ways. Firstly, it sought to focus on Arabic and Islamic Studies, making the department the first center in the world devoted to these subjects. Secondly, the scholar chosen as the intellectual architect of the department was Philip Hitti (1886-1978), a native of the “Orient.” Less than a dozen Orient-born faculty had secured professorships in Western universities. None enjoyed institutional support as would Hitti. Born in Lebanon to Christian-Maronite parents, neither of whom enjoyed formal education, Hitti was the first native Arabic-speaker to earn a PhD in a university in the West (Columbia 1915). Before joining Princeton, Hitti headed New York's Cosmopolitan Club (1915-1920), the largest organization for foreign college and university students in the country. Princeton’s hiring of Hitti meant that a native Arabic-speaker would take the lead in developing Arabic and Islamic Studies in Western academia. Hitti subsequently became the most widely-circulating Orientalist of his time—as well as the most circulating Arabic writer until around 1960. Only Hitti’s compatriot and correspondent, Lebanon-born and immigrant-to-America Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883- 1931), supplanted Hitti in book-sales in the 1960s, thanks to Gibran's 1923 The Prophet. At Princeton, Hitti welcomed Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ambassadors, US Senators, a Shah and an Emperor, as well as ministers of education from around the world. Capital and technology from the Americas regularly flowed through Hitti to the Middle East. Hitti headed the 1915-founded Near East Foundation, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars for relief efforts in the Levant beginning in WWI. Hitti also exported the Arabic linotype printing press from the US internationally (1929), energizing an already fermenting Arabic printing revolution. Yet what happened to the memory of Philip Hitti? This dissertation illuminates why Hitti has been forgotten-- and why he should be remembered.
Vol. 2, Iss. 1: Clarity and Quagmire (February 2019)
(Texas National Security Review, 2019-02) Texas National Security Review
When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984 (February 2019)
(Texas National Security Review, 2019-02) Evans, Alexandra T.; Potter, A. Bradley