Reading The Writing on the Wall
It’s been several years since I’ve seen anything interesting written about Egyptian graffiti, and most of that has been retrospective. Mona Abaza’s fascinating “Repetitive rep…
Author: MPeterson
Special Issue: “Religious Dynamics in Post-Revolutionary Egypt”
The social science journal Social Compass released a special issue in French and English on “Religious dynamics in post-revolutionary Egypt” (or “Dynamiques religieuses dans l’Égypte…
The ’60 Minutes’ as-Sisi Interview as Media Event
“What was he thinking?” is the question people keep asking about General as-Sisi’s Jan. 6 interview on 60 Minutes. It was interesting to watch the interview, which was…
The Internet & Democracy: Have We Learned Anything?
In the first wake of the Egyptian uprisings, and their framing as a “Facebook” revolution or Twitter revolution or “social media revolution” there was a lot of Utopian discours…
Getting Into Grad School
This might seem like an odd post because it is only tangentially related to Egypt. But it is based on lessons learned while I was the director of…
Changing Its Tune
Back in 2012 I blogged about MidEast Tunes (mideasttunes.com) one of the largest Arabic music sites in the world. I just updated my old post to fix the…
Hacking the Homeland Hack
Earlier this year I published a post describing how back in 2015 three artists — Heba Amin, Caram Kapp and Stone — were hired to create background graffiti…
Reporting On Egypt, From China
There is an account in Chapter Three of Pál Nyíri’s Reporting for China: How Chinese Correspondents Work with the World in which a couple of Chinese correspondents reflect…
Is As-Sisi Seeking Legitimization Through Repression?
“Sisi sworn in for second Egyptian presidential term amid crackdown on critics,” read the headline of the Reuter story on President As-Sisi assuming his second term in office.…
Framing The Revolution In Chinese
It will come as no surprise to most of us that how the Egyptian Revolution, and the Arab Spring more generally, was covered in global media would depend…
Anthropology of Coptic Christianity Since 2012
I was having dinner in Seoul recently with an old friend who taught in Egypt back around 2000. Living in East Asia for the past decade, he hasn’t…
Bibliography of the Egyptian Revolution Reaches 1000 Texts
Yesterday I was asked to review a paper on the Egyptian uprisings for an academic journal. After I read the manuscript, I went through the references, as I…
New Book Chapter On Mediated Experience Of The Uprisings
This just in: I have a new book chapter out on the Egyptian uprisings. The title is “Mediated Experience in the Egyptian Revolution” and it appears in Digital…
Diaspora, Gender & Mediated Revolution
In several relatively recent papers (2017, 2015a, 2015b) I’ve made the point that for tens of millions of Egyptians, the uprisings of 2011 weren’t something they physically experienced…
Guerilla Graffiti: Sabotaging Homeland
Greetings from Bhubaneshwar! I’m on leave in India working on projects far removed from Egypt and the Middle East, but I’m also reviewing materials and cleaning up things…
Trickster’s Path
If one tries to consider Tawfiq ‘Ukasha as a counterreactionary populist demagogue, (as do the few journalists and political scientists who mention him at all), the bizarre rises…
Morsi Must Die
There seems to be one thing that Egyptian dictator as-Sisi and ISIL agree on: Mohammed Morsi must die. ISIS was the first to voice this position, in a…
So…Is There A Global Occusphere?
The Occusphere. That’s the term given by Tod Moore of the University of Newcastle in Australia to the “totality of Occupy-inspired events” in his article “The transformation …
Making the Enemy…Or Not
At the end of 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood had gone from being an organization whose members held the Presidency and the largest number of seats in Parliament to…
Speaking Of Jinn…
I recently participated in a podcast about jinn, material culture and modernity and globalization on the Archaeological Fantasies podcast. Here’s their episode notes: Magical Jinn and where …
Do Instagram And Flickr Shape the Art of the Revolution?
Is Instagram a significant factor in how Egyptian artists used street art to protest the revolution? How about Flickr? My sense, based on all the recent books and…
Why Al-Jazeera America Never Gained Traction
“Can Al Jazeera English leverage its ‘Egypt moment’ into an American audience?” That question was asked back in 2011 by William Youmans and Katie Brown in a 2011 article…
Visual Anthropology Of The Egyptian Revolution (And Beyond)
A special issue of the journal Visual Anthropology brings together seven scholars exploring visual aspects of political contestation in the Middle East, especially the Arab Spring. The issue …
What Would A Muslim Brotherhood State Have Looked Like?
It’s one of the greatest controversies of the revolution: What would the state overseen by Egypt’s President Morsi have looked like if he had not been ousted in…