Talking Texts

Talking Texts is a thinking/feeling space for research on the Gulf. A select group of academics and researchers reflect on their positionality, research process, and the politics of knowledge production. My students and I read their articles and books as part of my classes “Women and Work in the Gulf” and “The Body Archive” and we hosted the authors in our virtual classroom for a rich exchange.

Alanoud Al-Sharekh

We invited Alanoud Al-Sharekh, a Kuwaiti researcher, academic, activist and feminist to join our class "Women and Work in the Gulf". Alanoud shared her experience of connecting feminist work in the academy with her advocacy journey as the founding member of Abolish 153, a campaign calling to end honour killings in Kuwait. In this interview, you can learn about feminist research and practice in Kuwait, the challenges of advocating for legislative change on gender issues, and the politics of academic knowledge production about gender in the gulf.

Omar AlShehabi

In this conversation, Omar AlShehabi gave us an overview of his book, Contested Modernity, which contains a history of intellectual and political life in Bahrain that he argued cuts across sectarian lines. By including Arabic language archives and reading colonial archives against the grain, he provided a different reading of society and power in the Gulf compared to mainstream approaches. Omar also reflected on his writing about the colonial origins of the Kafala system and the assumptions of transience in urban development projects and shared his view on the importance of ‘decolonizing’ academic research.

Mira Al Hussein

We invited Mira Al-Hussein, an Emirati researcher currently based at Cambridge University, to share her experience of creating "virtual roundtables" on topics such as "Expats in the Gulf", "Intersectional Feminism", and "Gulf Feminisms" in both English and Arabic. Mira also shared her current dissertation project on the relationship between gender, the state, and educational institutions in the UAE drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from Zayed University. Her talk enables us to further unpack questions relating to constructions of the national family, migrant and citizen belonging, and normalization of "separate but equal" policies in state supported women's empowerment projects.

Rana Al Mutawa

Meet Rana Al Mutawa, an Emirati researcher currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Oxford in Middle Eastern Studies. Rana shared her published work on topics such as "Constructions of Authenticity in National Dress in the UAE" and "State Feminism and Legitimizing Myths". She also shared some of her current dissertation work on the concept of authenticity of urban spaces in Dubai and various self- reflexive insights on what it means to conduct ethnographic work in her home country. Through engaging with her and her work we were able to unpack the nuances involved in constructed and gendered cultural symbols and better understand the role of the researcher’s positionality in shaping access to power in an urban ethnography.

Munira Al Sayegh

In this talk, we meet Munira Al Sayegh, an independent curator and co-founder of Engage 101, a grassroots platform that supports artists in the local art community in the UAE. Munira shares her experience working with various arts institutions and how that led her to co-found Engage 101 with Gaith Abdallah. Munira emphasizes the need to develop a strong local art community through inclusive practices and a resistance to problematic “global art” agendas or western-centric approaches. Her talk enabled students to better understand how to center their own lived experience and recognize the importance of emotions and language in academic and artistic production.

Sarah Brahim

In this episode of Talking Texts, we engage with questions of embodied knowledge: what would it mean to read the body as one would an academic text? Can the body be a source of knowledge? And if so, what does that knowledge tell us about the world we live in? We invited Sarah Brahim, a visual and performance artist from Saudi Arabia, working across mediums to present work rooted in experiences of the body. Sarah shares examples of her practice and then takes us through an embodiment workshop so we can experientially work through our bodies. Her session, which featured as part of our class “Women and Work in the Gulf” enabled us to creatively experiment with new ways of developing our Self Tracing projects.

Marwa Koheji

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating history, sociology, and cultural life of air conditioning (A.C.) in the Gulf with Marwa Koheji. Using Bahrain as an entry point, Marwa explains the colonial history of A.C. then takes us through anecdotes from her fieldwork. Her findings shed light on the relationship between cooling practices and modernity projects and on the racialized and gendered ways that shape how bodies interact with the technology. Marwa also reflects on the politics of knowledge production and what it meant to conduct her research as a Khaleeji PhD student in the U.S.

Sara Bin Sawfan and Zainab Hassoon

In this talk, Sara bin Safwan and Zainab Hassoon (cofounders of Studio Salasil) reflect on the experience of curating the studio’s first show, ‘Crystal Clear’ at Bayt Al Mamzar in Dubai from February–May 2024. Sara and Zainab discuss the importance of independent art curation in the Gulf and its challenges, particularly as founders of a young grassroots initiative. Through the lens of the body archive, they explore a number of questions. How can an independent curatorial studio create space for collective grief and dreaming? What are the lines between optimism and delusion, and do they matter? How do artists from the our region reclaim representations of their homelands? Sara and Zainab discuss the work of several collaborators from the show, including Ahmad Makia, Ali Eyal, Miramar Al Nayyar, Rand Abdul Jabbar and Juline Hadaya, speaking to how these artists draw on different media to represent and engage with both the sociopolitical and the abstract. Finally, the curators share how their own bodies and practices were reshaped by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Lara Chahine

In this talk we meet the artists Lara Chahine and Reem Falaknaz to hear about their work in the exhibition Ebla’a (Swallow This!) hosted by Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai in 2022. In this edited excerpt, Lara discusses the body of work she contributed to the exhibition, titled ‘Bless Your Beauty.’ Lara’s photographic series is about the pressure in Lebanon to be beautiful and sacred. Through her presentation, she touches on a number of questions. How are messages about beauty conveyed to Arab women in both the public and private spheres? What is the relationship between the beauty industry and sociopolitical instability? How can documentary journalism serve as a medium to trace oneself in relation to particular themes and social realities?

Reem Jabr

In this talk, Reem Jabr reflects on over 20 years of work experience in environmental consulting in Jordan and the UAE. Reem traces the multiple changes in her family’s life and career, beginning with her father’s displacement within Palestine to her settling in the U.S. with her husband and children. Through her personal experience, she addresses a number of questions: What are the gendered dynamics in the field of environmental consulting? How have circumstances for working women in the Gulf changed over the past two decades? How does serial migration shape opportunities across generations? How do legacies drive and animate us?

Zaina Zaarour

In this talk, Zaina Zaarour reflects on her experiences in curation, education, and research in both Palestine and the UAE. She discusses her early career as well as putting together the exhibition ‘On This Land’, hosted in November 2024 by Alserkal Avenue, The Palestinian Museum, and Barjeel Art Foundation. Rooted in her own experiences, Zaina discusses a number of questions. What defines success or failure in the world of curation and research? What makes a generative collaboration? How do we distinguish between optics and real change when it comes to the representation of women in arts and culture? And how can the art world create and open up space where space is shrinking or disappearing?