Description:

Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs invites graduate students to a seminar with Heather Jaber (Communication and Liberal Arts, NU-Q). Professor Jaber’s research and teaching examines digital and popular culture, affect and emotion, and transnational media. She will speak with us about her current book project: Digital bahdala and the postrevolutionary MENA: Proxies, pedagogy, and pressure. Abstract included below:

This talk introduces the concept of digital bahdala as a framework for understanding the relationship between nationalism and digital culture. I present work from my book project, Digital bahdala and the postrevolutionary MENA: Proxies, pedagogy, and pressure, which examines digital practices in the postrevolutionary contexts of Egypt and Lebanon. I argue that during a crisis of paternalism in state structures, national publics negotiate a tenuous relationship to middle class imaginaries that are increasingly untenable. I characterize the negotiations of these publics through their engagements with digital spectacles of bahdala, the Arabic word for ridicule, humiliation, or degradation. I offer three ways of understanding the desire to maintain national reputation which is the hallmark of paternalism; through the development of proxy figures, the employment of pedagogies, and the reliance on pressure groups. By foregrounding these three dimensions of nationalism in the digital age, digital bahdala identifies the moral engagements national publics bring to bear on practices of media production and consumption.

The talk will be followed by Q&A discussion. Lunch will be provided.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.