American University of Beirut

Dr. Ghalya Saadawi

Dr. Ghalya Saadawi (PhD Sociology, Goldsmiths University, 2015)

Short bio:

Areas of interest, research, and supervision include contemporary art theory; critiques of contemporary art and its practical transformations; art and theories of globalization and transnationalism; art and law; critical theory; aesthetics and politics; Lebanese visual art and film, among others. Saadawi has taught several courses on 20th and 21st art, with an emphasis on critical theory, yet also including post-Marxist critiques and more recent turns to realism and materialism. Saadawi additionally teaches at the Department of Visual Arts at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), University of Balamand, and is faculty at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI). Between 2015-2017, she was Resident Professor of Ashkal Alwan's art study program, the Home Workspace Program (HWP). She is co-editor of Makhzin, a young magazine for new writing in English and Arabic, and is affiliated with the Beirut Institute for Critical Research and Analysis (BICAR) http://www.bicar-lebanon.org/.

Ongoing courses:

AHIS 226 Introduction to Art After the Lebanese Wars

AHIS 252 Contemporary Art and Theory

AHIS 150 Freshman Art History

Upcoming Courses:

AHIS 250F Imagining the Future: Art Text Film

Past Courses:

AHIS 251 Theories of Modern Art

AHIS 225 Art Now

Formerly FAAH 293 Euro-American Art since 1945 

Select recent talks and conferences:

Panel “What Representations?" with Marwa Arasanios, Tony Chakar, Hicham Ashkar and Hanan Toukan. Witte de With Contemporary Art Museum, Rotterdam, Holland, May 26, 2016. 

“To Make Mountains Out of Fields: One Rewriting of 'Beirut's Postwar Contemporary Art'", talk at the Beirut Art Center (BAC), Beirut, March 1, 2017. 

“Beirut: Art, Education, Institutions, Politics", panel organizer and speaker, School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York City, March 16, 2017. 

“From Geo to Tempo and Rethinking the Local in the Contemporary Art Transnational", paper presented at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, August 2, 2017. 

“Borrowing Enjoyment", paper presented as part of the Dutch Art Institute's Roaming Academy, October 22, 2017. 

“The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Salon, Anti-Salon, Contemporary Art", paper presented as part of Contextualizing the Art Salon in the Arab Region Conference, Sursock Museum and Orient Institute Beirut, October 27-28, 2017. 

“The Witness, Art and Social Reproduction", paper presented as part of The Afterlives of Witnessing: Moving Images from the Levant and the Political Imagination Symposium, Brown University, Providence Rhode Island, November 4, 2017.  

Select and upcoming publications:

“On Chad Elias's Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon." Book review, ArtMargins Journal, forthcoming. 

“On the Private in Private Higher Education, and Pedagogical Interventions in the Context of the American University of Beirut." Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier Vol 5(1): Teaching Film and Media Against the Global Right, 2018.​
http://www.teachingmedia.org/on-the-private-in-private-higher-education-and-pedagogical-interventions-in-the-context-of-the-american-university-of-beirut/ 

 “From Anti-Aesthetic to Contemporary Art: Towards a Diagnosis of a New Political Economy of Art in Lebanon" (2018, unpublished draft). 

“Informal Operation." (2018) http://mophradat.org/projects-we-organize/publishing/  

“'It Makes Her Blind She Said': Love, Exhaustion, and the Roadblock." In Through the Roadblocks: Realities in Raw Motion, edited by Denise Robinson. Limassol: Cyprus University of Technology, 2014. 

“If Time is my Problem." In Ravaged: Arts and Culture in Times of Conflict, edited by Jo Tollebeek and Eline van Assche, Leuven and Brussels: M Museum and Mercatorfonds, 2014. 

“Notre Musique and Palestine: Documentary Needs Another Name," Translated by Fawwaz Traboulsi, Bidayat 5 (Summer 2013).  

“Not, Not contemporary: The Eye of the Storm," Third Text vol. 26, 4 (2012): 379-382.

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