Arab Animation: Images of Identity

by Omar Sayfo

Overview

Omar Sayfo textually analyses around 40 animation productions in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, the Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, from the 1930s until recently. He shows how rival notions of national, pan-Arab and Islamic identities have been advocated, challenged and fused by Arab animated cartoons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474479493
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2023
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Omar Sayfo is Affiliated Researcher in the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht Universityand a researcher at the Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. He has published articles among others in Animation, Media Industries Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture, as well as chapters in a number of edited collections.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Mediating National Identities in Arab Animation; 3. Arab Animated Sitcoms: Vehicles For The Mediation Of Critical Notions Of National Identities; 4. Approaches To Pan-Arab Identities; 5. Advocating Islamic Identities In Arab Animated Cartoons; 6. The Arab Spring Of Animation; 7. Epilogue: Can Arab Animation Go Global?; References.

Editorial Reviews

This work is encyclopaedic in ambition and scope. Its coverage includes details of the production background and texts of scores of animations, organised coherently according to the author’s framework of national, pan-Arab, Islamic, ‘revolutionary’ and global identities and researched through painstaking and resourceful seeking out and sifting of a wide range of archives and sources, including interviews.

Naomi Sakr

Dr. Sayfo has worked with the best scholars in the field, and has done such a large amount of groundwork through interviews and fieldwork, that I am convinced this book will serve as one of the benchmarks for research on Arab animation in years to come. This excellent book combines critical analysis of existing scholarship with original research that has not been accessed or unlocked previously.

Professor Stefanie Van de Peer