EUME
2012/ 2013

Tarek El-Ariss

Making A Scene: Literature, Social Media and the Arab Spring

Tarek El-Ariss is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at University of Texas at Austin. He received a BA in Philosophy from the American University of Beirut and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. His research interests include contemporary Arabic literature, visual culture, and new media; 18th- and 19th-century French and Arabic philosophy and travel writing; and affect and poststructuralist theory. He has contributed articles to such journals as Camerawork, The Muslim World, Comparative Literature Studies, and the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
He is the author of Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (Fordham University Press) and the editor of The Arab Renaissance: Anthology of Nahda Literature, Culture, and Language (Modern Language Association), both appearing in 2013. He edits a series on literature in translation for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas Press entitled Emerging Voices from the Middle East.

Making A Scene: Literature, Social Media and the Arab Spring

As a EUME Fellow, El-Ariss will be refining the conceptual framework of his new book project on Arabic literature and the virtual, exploring the way modes of confrontation, circulation, and exhibitionism shape writing practices and critiques of power.