While Middle Eastern culture does not tend to be associated with laughter and levity in the global imagination, humor—often satirical—has long been a staple

In recent years, the Arab world and Iran have been afflicted by cataclysmic events, among them brutal state crackdowns of revolutions. Yet, filmmakers have pers

When the World Laughs is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world's most popular movie genres

To a substantial degree cinema has served to define the perceived character of the peoples and nations of the Middle East. This book covers the production and e

The November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, an