Faculty

Helga Tawil-Souri

Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication

Helga Tawil-Souri

Phone: 212-992-9437
Email:
Office Hours: on-leave 2012-2013

Associated Faculty, Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies

2012-2013: Writer-in-Residence at The New York Public Library 

 

Helga’s work focuses on issues spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle East.

The bulk of Helga’s scholarship analyzes culture and technology in everyday life in Palestine-Israel, focusing on the post-‘peace process’ time period, theorizing how media technologies and infrastructures function as bordering mechanisms, and how territorial/physical boundaries function as cultural spaces. Her publications have analyzed different aspects of contemporary cultural politics, including the internet, telecommunications, television, film, and videogames, as well as physical markers such as ID cards and checkpoints. Her work analyzes how each of these technologies is shaped, used, negotiated and sometimes resisted in their historical-political specificities.

Helga also researches and writes about the larger landscape of Arab media, and in particular new technologies and their relationship to political and economic transformations.

Helga previously worked as a researcher and strategic analyst at a multinational media conglomerate, and, later, as an internet consultant. She has lived in various parts of North America, Europe, and the Middle East, which has resulted in border-crossings of various kinds and the ability to fluently communicate in six languages. When not wearing her academic hat, Helga is behind the camera as a photographer and documentary film-maker, and trying to learn her seventh language.

 

 


Research Interests

  • Globalization, development
  • Critical geography, borders
  • Media and hi-tech infrastructure
  • Arab media and culture
  • Contemporary Palestinian politics and culture

Publications

BOOKS

Tawil-Souri, H. (forthcoming). Digital Occupation: Infrastructures as Borders in Palestine/Israel

Khiabany, G; T. Sabry; and H. Tawil-Souri, eds. (in progress). The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East. Wiley-Blackwell.

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Tawil-Souri, H. (2012). It's Still About the Power of Place. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5(1): 88-97. Special Issue: Arab Uprisings, One Year On. (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2012). Egypt's Uprising and the Shifting Spatiality of Politics. Cinema Journal.

Tawil-Souri, H. (2012). Uneven Borders, Colored (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel. Geopolitics 17(2): 1-24. (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2012). Digital Occupation: The High-Tech Enclosure of Gaza. Journal of Palestine Studies 42(2): 27-43. (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). Mapping Israel-Palestine. Political Geography 30(8) (link) 

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). Where is the Political in Cultural Studies? In Palestine. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16(1), 1-16. (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). Colored Identity: The Politics and Materiality of ID Cards in Palestine/Israel. Social Text 107, 67-97 (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). Qalandia: An Autopsy. Jerusalem Quarterly 45, 73-81 (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Non-Place. Space and Culture 14(1), 4-26 (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). The 'War on Terror' in Arab Media. In Daya Thussu and Des Freedman (eds.), Media and Terrorism: Global Perspectives. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Tawil-Souri, H. (2011). The Necessary Politics of Palestinian Cultural Studies. In Tarik Sabry (ed.), Conceptualising Cultural Studies and Media Studies in the Arab World: Mapping the Field. London: I.B. Tauris. (link )

Tawil-Souri, H. (2010). Walking Nicosia, Imagining Jerusalem. Re-Public 4 (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2010). Qalandia Checkpoint: The Historical Geography of a Non-Place. Jerusalem Quarterly 42, 27-48 (view) (Interview for Palestine Studies TV / Institute for Palestine Studies link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2009). Towards a Palestinian Cultural Studies. Middle East Journal of Communication and Culture 2(2), 181-185 (view)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2009). New Palestinian Centers: An Ethnography of the 'Checkpoint Economy.' International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(3), 217-235 (view)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2008). Arab Television in Academic Scholarship. Sociology COMPASS 2(5), 1400-1415 (view)

Tawil-Souri, H. (2007). The Political Battlefield of Pro-Arab Videogames on Palestinian Streets. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 27(3), 536-551 (view)

Tawil Souri, H. (2007). Move Over Bangalore. Here Comes... Palestine? Western Funding and 'Internet Development' in the Shrinking Palestinian State. In Paula Chakravartty and Yuezhi Zhao (eds.), Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy (263-284). Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.

Tawil-Souri, H. (2007). Global and National Forces for a Nation-State Yet to Be Born: The Paradoxes of Palestinian Television Policies. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 4(3), 4-25 (view)

Souri, H.T. (2006). Marginalizing Palestinian Development: Lessons Against Peace. Development 49(2), 75-80 (view)

Tawil, H. (2005). Coming Into Being and Flowing Into Exile: History and Trends in Palestinian Film-Making. Nebula 2(2), 113-140 (view)

 

OP-EDS

Tawil-Souri, H. (October 26, 2012). Open - and close - Zion. Antenna (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (November 11, 2011). Hacking Palestine: A Digital Occupation. Al Jazeera English (link)

Tawil-Souri, H. (October 10, 2011). Occupy Wall Street to Global Intifada? Al Jazeera English (link)

 

Courses

UG:

  • Global Honors Seminar: Borders, Barriers, and Buffers 
  • Cultural Geography and Media of Commodities
  • Mediating Israel/Palestine
  • Communication and International Development
  • Islam, Media, and the West
  • Introduction to Media Studies
  • Media and Globalization

Grad: 

  • Middle East Media and Cultural Politics 
  • Middle East Media and Cultural Politics: Israel/Palestine 
  • Topics in Globalization: International Development
  • Media, Culture, and Communication Core Seminar (MA Theory Core)
  • Dissertation Proposal Seminar
  • Doctoral Core Seminar 1 (PhD Theory Core)

 

Courses Teaching in Fall 2013: 

Borders, Barriers, and Buffers. MCC UE 1416

Doctoral Core Seminar. MCC GE 3100