This paper discusses the role of art in the construction of the United Arab Emirates along with the participation of women who now work widely in the visual and commercial arts. The production and display of art can contribute to the building of a nation because the arts help to create a new nation’s cultural symbols and thus its identity. The governments of the United Arab Emirates have been particularly interested in promoting traditional and contemporary art and has trained energetic young adults – both male and female – who have become involved in the promotion, production, and curating of artistic endeavor. These activities have a clear gender dimension. Commentators have noted that many leaders of the Emirati art scene are women, and this paper pays particular attention to the role of higher education in the training and encouragement of national women to enter the fields of the arts. The federal nature of the United Arab Emirates polity also provides an opportunity to examine the gender implications of different models of art promotion. We contrast Abu Dhabi’s efforts to develop world-class centers of artistic display with the more entrepreneurial and decentralized approach of Dubai authorities who have promoted vibrant networks of galleries linked to art studios. In addition, the paper examines the government of Sharjah’s attempts to develop its own centers of cultural production and display. We investigate whether different types of art promotion have different gendered consequences. The paper is organized in the following manner. In the first part, we outline the different art promotion pursued by the governments of the United Arab Emirates. The second section investigates the arts curricula of important public and non-governmental higher educational institutions. It also examines how these establishments use internship programs to encourage women to enter activities which promote art after they graduate from their universities. The third section examines how women’s activities respond to and shape the trajectory of art production and display in the nation. The paper concludes with a consideration of the tensions which often emerge when a nation attempts to use art as nation-building and branding activities. Art is often transgressive and experimental, while conceptions of appropriate gender relations are often at the heart of struggles over the essence of the nation. This paper explores these issues and assess the transformative potential of art promotion and display.

Staging Motherhood in the (Re)Birthing of the UAE Nation-State Abstract As regional geopolitical threats (i.e. Arab Spring, Yemen War, Iran) have intensified in the neighboring Gulf countries, the UAE state has strategically coped by strengthening its domestic military capacity. Through the enforcement of the UAE national service, the UAE state has subtly promoted nationalist rhetoric agendas towards local UAE mothers/women in order to collectively support their children’s military conscription. These nation-building and state branding approaches have become nationalized and institutionalized, acting as a state strategy to uplift their motherhood responsibilities and rebirth and strengthen the UAE nation state’s role as the custodial protector of the nation. Using content analysis of state officials’ interview statements drawn from various local Arabic and English newspapers and other state social media publications (i.e. Twitter), I examine the complex relationships between the state and motherhood in UAE’s contemporary context, and how the UAE state has increasingly (re)branded functions of motherhood in times of unrest. I specifically argue that the growing maturity of states has increasingly emphasized motherhood as a strategic tool to strengthen and maintain absolute belonging and loyalty to the ruler and ensure regime survival in the long run. The study holds empirical and theoretical relevance because it offers critical insights on the shifting assertive behavior of the UAE state to brand, rebirth, and frame the role of motherhood in nation building, and strengthen its internal and external nationhood and sovereignty in the region. Keywords: motherhood, UAE, nation-state, rebirthing, staging, and sovereignty, loyalty, subjects

Through state-sponsored media campaigns, educational institutions, and sites of religious learning, the UAE’s citizens and foreign residents are instructed in the ideal of “empowerment” and taught to enact its practices in their everyday lives. Discourses of empowerment assert that individuals have the ability—and, indeed, responsibility—to assert control over their bodies, emotions, actions, lives, and destinies at large. A neoliberal precept at its core, the tenet of empowerment is premised upon a particular understanding of subjectivity, where the individual constitutes the primary unit of society and possesses the freedom, desire, and capacity for the self-control necessary for self-development. This paper examines how the UAE’s empowerment discourses and campaigns operate as part of a national project dedicated to producing self-governing, neoliberal subjects. It focuses in particular on how a nationwide push for “women’s empowerment,” as a personal aspiration and societal objective, has shaped the subjectivities of not only Emirati women, but also migrant women based in the UAE. Local media is suffused with laudatory narratives which underscore the successes of empowerment campaigns by highlighting women’s accomplishments and agency. This paper combines an analysis of these official accounts of empowerment with data collected from two years of ethnographic research conducted with migrant Muslim women resident in the UAE. Its approach is twofold: firstly, it identifies and examines the specific characteristics which define this locally rooted empowerment venture. Secondly, it considers how this state-led empowerment regime is embodied, negotiated, and challenged by women in their narratives and everyday practices. The paper combines these related threads of inquiry to ask: what kind of subject does the UAE’s discourse of empowerment produce among migrant Muslim women? It argues that, insofar as empowerment is interwoven with agency, and insofar as agency is the bedrock of subjectivity, ascertaining the types of empowerment endorsed by the state and evaluating how these models are engaged on the ground grants us insight into the modes of subjectivity animating women in the UAE. Building upon scholarship theorizing empowerment, agency and subjectivity, and neoliberal governmentality, this paper contributes to conversations dedicated to making sense of how individual agency and freedom are expressed in relation to the modern state’s techniques of governance. Significantly, in using a GCC state as its case study, it aims to demonstrate the pervasiveness of these (post)modern forms of power while also detailing their uniquely local iterations—and thus the specificities of the subjectivities they engender.

Print media institutions play multiple roles in contemporary societies. Through processes of selection, articulation and filtering, they define what counts as news, inform the public of significant events and shape audiences’ ideas, beliefs and identities (Fowler 1991). In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), newspapers have a tendency to highlight local achievements, and the empowerment of Emirati women is no exception. Thus, it is not unrealistic to assume that the stories published in local newspapers and the language through which women’s issues are framed contribute to constructing women’s social reality, their identity and the public attitude towards their empowerment. Like many institutions in the UAE, journalism seems to reproduce a state-sponsored ideology and linguistic expression: the frequent references to modernity, development, nation building, traditional values, the role of the youth and that of women are a case in point. Despite the extensive media coverage of Emirati women issues, little research is available on how local media depict Emirati women, women’s rights and women empowerment. To address this gap, this study examines the dominant women empowerment narrative in one local newspaper. Using an interdisciplinary approach that builds on the traditions and theories of media studies (Tuchman 1978; Goffman 1974; Entman 1993), critical linguistics (Fowler 1991; Bell 1991), critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk 1991; Fairclough 1995), and the dialogic thought of Bakhtin (1981), the paper argues that the print media is actively involved in disseminating a selective brand of ‘the ideal Emirati woman’ and that this brand is consistent with the nationally promoted ‘ideal citizen’. In particular, the paper analyses the dominant/repeated themes in the headlines and lead paragraphs of the media stories. Also, it examines agency through the analysis of the voices and sources embedded in these mediated texts. Furthermore, the paper examines the rhetorical devices used and their influence on the reader with special focus on lexical choices, repetition, slogans, re-contextualisation, and the number game (Van Dijk 1988). The data is drawn from Gulf News, a daily newspaper published in English in Dubai, from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018. The project will contribute to our understanding of how the discourse on women empowerment in the print media of an Arab/Islamic progressive nation compares to the same discourse elsewhere in the region and the world.