Arab Digital Humanities in the Twenty-first Century

Laila Shereen Sakr

UC Santa Barbara

 

May 24, 2022

Arab Council on Social Sciences

Beirut, Lebanon

Arab/Islamic History
Digital Theory

Media, Art, and Culture

Tools and Artifacts

Islamic DH

T. El-Ariss

hacking (tahkir, iktiraq)

leaking (tasrib)

revealing (ifsha), proliferation (tafashshi)

and exposure and scene-making (fadh)

L. Marks

Enfoldment and Infinity (2010)

Hanan al-Cinema (2015)

Digital Theory

 

  • The term algorithm predates the digital computer by over a thousand years, with an etymology traceable to the Islamic scholar al-Khwārizmī. How can we understand the explosion of discourse about algorithms in popular culture in the last decade?
     

  • What does it mean to study algorithms as myth, narrative, cultural objects, discourse, or power?

Digital Arts....

  • Ahmed Basiony "ASCII Doesn't Speak Arabic"
  • Mohamed Allam "My Nineties"
  • Joy Garnett's Bee Kingdom
  • The Box - الصندوق (YouTube series from Jordan)
  • Ahmed Elshaer's Recycle (the Code)
  • Ramy Nasr's قلب
  • Jill Magid Surveillance Shoe
  • .....

Twitter has been credited for the successful mobilization of demonstrators after the elections in Iran.The U.S. StateDepartment allegedly intervened in its Twitter maintenance schedule to ensure that the service would be available to Iranians on their election day. Whereas Twitter, YouTube, and Flicker were used to disseminate news from Tehran and other Iranian cities. proxy servers were set up for activists to circumvent Iran's tightly controlled internet infrastructure.

Iranian Elections 2009

Mottahedeh, Negar (2015) #iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of Online Life, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Kefaya Movement 

Kefaya is the unofficial moniker of the Egyptian Movement for Change, a grassroots coalition which prior to the 2011 revolution drew its support from across Egypt’s political spectrum. It was a platform for protest against Hosni Mubarak’s presidency and the possibility he might seek to transfer power directly to his son Gamal; political corruption and stagnation. While it first came to public attention in the summer of 2004, and achieved a much greater profile during the 2005 constitutional referendum and presidential election campaigns, it subsequently lost momentum, suffering from internal dissent, leadership change, and a more general frustration at the apparent inability of Egypt’s political opposition to force the pace of reform.

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Kefaya Movement 
  • Open Source Technology
  • Facebook launched in 2004

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Kefaya Movement 
  • Open Source Technology
  • Facebook launched in 2004
  • Twitter launched in 2006

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Kefaya Movement 
  • Open Source Technology
  • Facebook launched in 2004
  • Twitter launched in 2006
  • Bloggers jailed in 2006
  •  

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

  • The Muslim Brotherhood launch website in 2004
  • The Kefaya Movement 
  • Open Source Technology
  • Facebook launched in 2004
  • Twitter launched in 2006
  • Bloggers jailed in 2006
  • Berkman Center maps blogsphere

History of Digital Activism in Egypt (2004-2010)

"Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere:

Politics, Culture, and Dissent" Etling, B. et al. (link)

#Jan25 

(link)

Data Visualizations

Thank You

@vj_um_amel