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Summer course: “Glocal Ummas: Content creation and new media in the Arab-Islamic realm”

From April 29, 2021 until July 18, 2021The course will be given from September 2 to 4, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe headquarters (at Calle Alcalá, 62). The course will be given from September 2 to 4, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
To sign up, please fill out this form and send it in to this email address. 
Spanish

Casa Árabe, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the IEXCUL research group are organizing this course, which will allow participants to take a closer look at issues like digital creation, new media, freedom of expression and feminism, as well as others. The course will be held from September 2 to 4 in Madrid, and registration is now available 

New media, digital creation, artistic, visual and audiovisual contents, curatorship and performing arts, feminism, resistance and freedom of expression, all within Arab-Islamic contexts, will be just a few of the aspects we focus on, through round tables and conferences with experts, journalists, editors and creators, in this summer course organized by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Casa Árabe and the IEXCUL (Arab Ideologies and Cultural Expressions) research group from September 2 to 4, 2021 at Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Madrid.

Directed by professors Carlos Cañete and Luz Gómez, both professors in the UAM’s Department of Arab and Islamic Studies, the course provides a necessary update of knowledge on Arab-Muslim societies from an mainly practical approach, linking humanistic and technological factors, getting the university involved in the most current public debates.

At present, the categories tied with the concept of the nation-state and the traditional media used for informing and creating are growing increasingly ineffective in dealing with the wide range of social, economic and cultural processes that occur as a result of the tension between global and local (or “glocal”).

Thinking about this as it refers to the Arab-Islamic world leads to necessary reflection on how new communication and information technologies feed into relationships, processes and identities that go beyond conventional analytical frameworks. Where can we find the umma in a networked society? How far are the limits of knowledge and cultural categories in an Arab-Islamic world enunciated through the new media? What frameworks define experiences by Muslims within a world of technologically inter-connected revolutions and migrations?

Once the program has ended, students will be able to answer these questions with well-reasoned responses thanks to a series of comprehensive tools involving the processes that have led to the development of new media and forms of cultural, ideological and identity expression in the Arab-Islamic world. In much the same way, they will be able to express original critical opinions on the main connection lines provided by the technological media, communication and social interaction, as well as their impact on configuration of the umma.

Last but not least, the in-person format of the course will allow for direct sharing amongst students, and between them and the specialists who take part. As a result, those attending will get the chance to exercise dialectics and self-criticism, defending solid, persuasive arguments based on the knowledge they acquire during the lectures, debates and round table discussions that make up the program.

The price of the course is €64. Non-salaried university students and unemployed university graduates can apply for a full or half scholarship.

This summer course will be held at Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Madrid on the dates of September 2, 3 and 4, 2021, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. You may now register. Students who take the course will receive 1 ECTS unit.

FURTHER INFORMATION 
Contact information: actividades.culturales@uam.es

COURSE CONTENTS

1) Challenges to the epistemic and political borders of glocalized Arab-Islamic societies (Carlos Cañete and Luz Gómez – UAM).

2) Arab societies as seen through new media (Cristina Moreno – King’s College London).

3) Content creation in the Arab digital world (Rubén Ojeda – Wikipedia in Spanish; Anass Sedrati – Wikipedia in Arabic, INPT).

4) How to think about content creation and new media in Arab-Islamic contexts? (speakers that morning).

5) Round table: Information and new media. Resituating the Arab-Islamic world (Yolanda Álvarez – TVE; Najwan Darwish – Al-Arabi al-Jadid); Pedro Rojo – Al-Fanar Foundation).

6) Current art and curatorship of new contents through the Mediterranean (Sandra Maunac – Art curator).

7) Performing arts and resistance at borders: the Sahara and Palestine (Olga Blázquez – Performer).

8) Feminist activism in the Arab world through Instagram and comics (Zainab Fasiki – Graphic artist and illustrator).

9) How do we define visual and artistic content in today’s Arab-Islamic societies? 

5) Round table: Has text died? Arab publishing and translation in the transmedia era (Khaled Soleiman – Manshurat al-Mutawassit; Inmaculada Jiménez – Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo; M. Luz Comendador – Toledo School of Translators). 

11) Testimony, discrimination and freedom of expression: alternative documentaries in an era of Arab revolutions (Carles Bover – Documentary filmmaker and Goya award-winner for best short subject documentary; Laura Casielles – Journalist and writer). 

5) Round table: Digital “costumbrismo”: Arab-Muslim daily life on YouTube (Aicha KRW and Ramia Channel – YouTubers).