The Double Execution of Saddam Hussein: Diaspora, Media, and Images

With Zainab Saleh

Middle East Studies

Tuesday, November 25, 2014 6:00 PM EST
Research Hall, Room 163

Join the Middle East Studies Program, Middle East Etc. Film Club, Center for Global Islamic Studies, and School of Policy, Government & International Affairs (SPGIA), and Department of Sociology and Anthropology​ for a lecture with Zainab Saleh

This talk focuses on the double execution of Saddam Hussein, namely his execution and the fall of his statue in Baghdad. In addition to approaching these moments as media events, the talk unravels how Iraqi exiles in London perceived them. To Iraqis, these events are not simply visual events staged by the U.S. military and appropriated by the media. Rather, they are situated in a history of persecution and exile, transgression, and distrust of imperial politics. In other words, these events inhabited multiple political spheres. This talk discusses these (media) events through questions of defacement, simulation, and mediation, and explores the impact of the (live) broadcast of these events on Iraqi diasporic imagination and relations with homeland.


SPEAKER BIO

Zainab Saleh is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the coordinator of the Middle East and Islamic Studies program at Haverford. Zainab was the 2011-2013 Mellon Post-Doc Fellow at the John B. Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities at Haverford College. She received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2011. Zainab's publications include "Iraq and Its Tahrir Square" in The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings, "On Iraqi Nationality: Law, Citizenship, and Exclusion" in Arab Studies Journal

Sponsored by Middle East Studies Program, Middle East Etc. Film Club, Center for Global Islamic Studies, and School of Policy, Government & International Affairs (SPGIA), and Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

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