This paper focuses on a pivotal moment of cross-cultural exchange: the 1939/1940 New York World’s Fair, where American organizers invited Middle Easterners to curate presentations of their own societies for consumption by American audiences. This gesture represented a break in the pattern of ignoring Middle Eastern curation in favor of Western planners and their Orientalist fantasies about the region. Indeed, the directors of the New York World’s Fair were eager to engage Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Turks, and others from the Middle East to present their own national narratives for the entertainment consumption of Americans. These pavilions were highly successful, and Middle Eastern curators and American officials of the Fair felt optimistic about future relations among their nations. However, this was not realized without some controversy and contest. Patrons of the Fair enjoyed presentations of the Middle East curated exclusively by representatives of Middle Eastern lands, with one exception: British Palestine. The World’s Fair committee failed to convince the British colonial state to curate a Palestine exhibit, so, in its place, American supporters of Zionism created a Palestine pavilion that was exclusively focused on the Zionist colonial project in the British Mandate colony. This resulted in tremendous tension between the organizers of the Fair and those of the Palestine exhibit, as well as between advocates of the Palestinian Arab national cause and the organizers of the Fair, the British government and the organizers of the Fair, and anti-Zionist Jewish groups in the USA and the organizers of the pro-Zionist pavilion. By exploring this case, I argue that shifting political realities—the portent of empire’s decline and the promise of national sovereignty in the Middle East—opened up a door for a more mutual conversation about how to represent the Middle East to Western audiences in which Middle Easterners were key players. At the same time, the controversy surrounding Zionism and the hijacking by Zionists of the Palestine exhibition provided new avenues for contention about such representations—including a near-total silencing of Palestinian Arab voices, just at a time when American cultural impresarios were opening up to the notion that Arabs had a right to present their national narratives in public entertainment venues like World's Fairs. Sources for this paper include unpublished archival records, newspaper and newsreel reportage, and both written and visual ephemera from the Fair.

Othman the Nubian was the recurrent role of Egyptian stage and film star, Ali al-Kassar. Al-Kassar made this character hugely popular - playing it in blackface - first in his stage comedies during the 1910s and 1920s, and then, albeit changed and transformed, in his comedy films during the 1930s and 1940s. Partly drawing on stock representations of black people in 19th century Egyptian literature and journalism, and partly used advertently to prescribe an ideal vision of the “new” and “modern” Egypt, Othman the Nubian’s character was laden with different meanings, sometimes competing and contradictory ones. As a black man, Othman was a part of a marginalized community, bundled up with other, semi-“foreign”, characters who occupied a liminal space in Egyptian society; and at the same time he was meant to epitomize an “all-Egyptian” figure, a part of a colorblind and racially-equal Egypt. He represented the “everyman”, whom middle and lower-middle class spectators could readily identify with, rooting for him throughout his exploits with upper-class men and women. But these exploits were based on a series of mistaken identities that once revealed, reaffirmed the existing social order. Othman's character was also thoroughly sexualized: he was always implicated or consorted with elite women, while having marital problems with his wife Umm Ahmad, usually expressed in a very bawdy language. Using al-Kassar’s plays, films, and biographies, this study will examine the articulation of black identity in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century through the portrayal of Othman the Nubian in popular culture, which was geared towards an emerging urban middle class, using the tools of a new mass media. It will explore this character’s various frames of reference, from the anti-colonial struggle, to different constructions of Egyptian nationalism, interactions with other liminal groups in Egyptian society, class hierarchy and mobility, and the sexual anxieties aroused by Othman's exploits. Finally, this study will ask some questions about representativeness and reception, arguing that, on the whole, there was a wide gap between what Othman’s character presented, and the lived experiences of black people in Egypt. It will also argue that al-Kassar tried to echo the fiery intellectual debates of the time and their different national and social visions for a nation which was in a political, economic and social flux; while at the same time catering to viewers’ tastes, on which he depended commercially.

My paper intends to investigate the construction and strengthening of transnational networks between Europe and the Arab world in the 1930s, by focusing on the experience of Radio Bari, a radio station broadcasting in Arabic and intended to enhance the Italian Fascist political and strategic presence in the Arab world. More specifically, this paper aims at enquiring to what extent Radio Bari might be considered an example of the cultural transnational networks that existed throughout the Mediterranean sea in the 1930s. Being a radio that was transmitting from Italy to the Arab world, thus circulating information across state borders, Radio Bari was by definition a transnational phenomenon. But, my paper wants to highlight other aspects of that experience. In fact, as was the case with other European radios (Radio Daventry, Radio Paris Mondial, Radio Berlin) where Arabs were employed as announcers, Radio Bari took advantage of the participation in its programs of a relevant group of Arabs (both from Mashreq and Maghreb) either as speakers or as guests. Political and religious channels—i.e. Arab nationalists and Christian Arabs—were used by the Italian government to identify people who could work in the radio and participate in its programs. As examples, among the speakers there was Salim Cattan, brother of a Maronite Lebanese bishop, and among the guests Shakib Arslan, Habib Bourguiba, Taha Hussein and Muhammad Kurdali. This paper intends to reply to several questions. What was Arabs’ role in Radio Bari’s programs? To what extent did they contribute in shaping Radio Bari? How did they interact with the Italian radio staff and the broader group of Italian Oriental scholars, such as Carlo Alfonso Nallino, Ettore Rossi and Laura Veccia Vaglieri (the only non-Muslim allowed to attend the 1935 Muslim Congress of Europe), as well as journalists, such as Enrico Insabato, Daniele Occhipinti, and Ugo Danone, Enrico Nuné? To what extent did they contribute to make Radio Bari a transnational experience? Apart from the (few) bibliography existing on this topic, in terms of sources my paper will be mainly based on the unpublished documentation that I have been collecting so far in several archives in Italy, UK, France, Morocco and the US.

Until his recent passing, the Egyptian scholar Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri (1938-2008) was the Arab world’s most prominent public intellectual in the field of Jewish studies. His "Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism" is a key Arabic work of reference. His works therefor demand thorough study. A proper understanding of Masiri’s representation of Judaism and Zionism could also enable us to test the common view that the Arab world is characterized by an all-pervasive Antisemitism. This paper offers a study of Messiri’s oeuvre from the perspective of Identity/Alterity Studies. Using Baumann & Gingrich (Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A structural approach 2004), the case will be made that Messiri’s representation of Judaism actually qualifies as ‘encompassment by hierarchical subsumption’. The paper will consequently analyse the discursive logic behind this image of Judaism.

The purpose of this study is to show how the cartoons of the Palestinian diasporic artist N?ji? al-‘Ali? constructs and maintains a sense of national identity in exile. The chapter draws on some of his anthologized cartoons published in the 1970s and 1980s by cartoon anthologies. My analysis relies on Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Community, John C. Turner’s theory of self- categorization, and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of antagonism in the construction of the “US” and the Other.” I argue that al-‘Ali?’s political cartoons provide a discourse that articulates the Palestinian “imagined community” in national term from the historical position of exile. Such an articulation provides fields for identifications among Palestinians whether internally displaced or in the diaspora. al-‘Ali?’s cartoons produce antagonisms to give rise to the Palestinian “imagined community.” I base this argument on the assumption that we cannot fully understand how the Palestinian national identity is shaped without looking at the work of artists in exile. Understanding the Palestinian national identity necessitates focusing not only on the wars inflicted on the internally displaced Palestinians, otherwise and ironically referred to as the “inside” (Felis?iniyo al-D?khil), but also the wars inflicted on the refugees (Filis?iniyo al-Shat?t). The model of long-distance nationalism I am setting out applies to refugees. Benedict Anderson’s Long-Distance Nationalism describes the contribution of political figures in their nation building. Anderson’s “The New World Disorder” provided an example that explicates the nature of this type of nationalism. He said that the survival of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is possible “not only because of its national appeal and its ruthless methods, but because it has gained political and financial support in the United States and inside England, weapons on the international arms market, and training and intelligence from Libya and in the Near East” (13). I will follow a different approach in this study by focusing on “ordinary individuals” (Birgit Bock-Luna, The Past in Exile 20), such as al-‘Ali?. The study reveals that the Palestinian identity is constructed through deploying folkloric and national symbols such as the K?fiyyah, and the key, and through portraying the Palestinian nation as a woman. Deploying these symbols aims at raising the consciousness among the Palestinian community, and then invokes a communal response: National resistance. The surveyed cartoons also deploy some Palestinian cultural repertoire in creating fantasies about a threat to the nation (i.e. Israel as a rapist of the Palestinian nation).