Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

<p>This book explores the body and the production process of popular culture in and on the Middle East and North Africa Turkey and Iran in the first decade of the 21st century and up to the current historical moment. Essays consider gender racial political and cultural issues in film cartoons music dance photo-tattoos graphic novels fiction and advertisements. Contributors to the volume span an array of specializations ranging across literary postcolonial gender media and Middle Eastern studies and contextualize their views within a larger historical and political moment analyzing the emergence of a popular expression in the Middle East and North Africa region in recent years and drawing conclusions pertaining to the direction of popular culture within a geopolitical context. The importance of this book lies in presenting a fresh perspective on popular culture combining media that are not often combined and offering a topical examination of recent popular production aiming to counter stereotypical representations of Islamophobia and otherness by bringing together the perspectives of scholars from different cultural backgrounds and disciplines. The collection shows that popular culture can effect changes and alter perceptions and stereotypes constituting an area where people of different ethnicities genders and orientations can find common grounds for expression and connection.</p>