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Helga Tawil-Souri

Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication; Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies

Media, Culture, and Communication

212-992-9437

Associate Professor Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies

Helga works on technology, media, culture, territory and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Palestine. Helga is co-editor with Dina Matar of Gaza as Metaphor (Hurst 2016) and Producing Palestine (Bloomsbury 2024), and currently serves on the editorial boards of Social Text and Public Culture. She has published a wide range of articles and chapters on checkpoints, borders, infrastructure, media and telecom, surveillance, and other topics, and has been experimenting with collage and visual forms of expression. 

Helga teaches courses at undergraduate and graduate levels on topics including borders and spatiality, Arab media, critical theory and media studies, Israel/Palestine, war and media, globalization and international development, public humanities, Middle Eastern cities and urban spaces, and what has been referred to as "the coffee class" (cultural geography of commodities), which is not always about coffee.

Selected Publications

 

Programs

Media, Culture, and Communication

Our media studies programs train agile researchers of a shifting media landscape. Learn to analyze media and technology in its cultural, social, and global contexts.

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Courses

Culture and Media Geography of Commodities: Coffee

This course will investigate the cultural geography of a specific commodity, assessing historical and contemporary issues that inform modes of production and development of international or domestic trade. The subtopic may vary. Students will work as a team to produce a project that analyzes the intricacies of the commodity"in this case, coffee. The course will include on-the-ground research and site visits.
Course #
MCC-UE 1762
Credits
4
Department
Media, Culture, and Communication

Media- Culture- & Communication Core Seminar

Examines theoretical approaches that are central to the study of media, culture, and communication. provides students with a historical and critical framework for understanding the literature and research traditions within the field of media studies with an emphasis on media and communication as institutional actors, technological artifacts, systems of representation and meaningful cultural objects.
Course #
MCC-GE 2001
Credits
4
Department
Media, Culture, and Communication

Middle East Media and Cultural Politics

Examines developments of culture, politics, and media in contemporary Middle East through an historical and cultural lens. Course is organized by theoretical theme and geographic location and addresses culture as a site of struggle; the impact of globatlization on Arab mass media; the connections between civil society, demoracy and Islam; and gender, national and diasporic identities.
Course #
MCC-GE 2275
Credits
4
Department
Media, Culture, and Communication