How are issues related to identity representation negotiated in Middle Eastern and North African museums? Can museums provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice? Can narratives change and stereotypes be broken and, if so, what kind of identities are being deployed?Against the backdrop of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaken the region in recent years, the contributors to this volume interrogate a range of case studies from across the region examining how museums engage inclusion, diversity and the politics of minority identities. They bring to the fore the...

This book argues that Armenians around the world in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial 1940s and 1950sTsolin Nalbandian explores Armenians' discursive re-positioning within the newly independent Lebanese nation-state; the political-cultural impact (in Lebanon as well as Syria) of the 1946 8 repatriation initiative to Soviet Armenia; the 1956 Catholicos election; and the 1957...

This book explores the evolution of Palestinian identity from one that struggled for independence and self-determination up to 1948, to one that now presses the call for civil rights and civic equality. What were the forces that shaped this transformation over six decades? Author Manar H. Makhoul uses the methodology of sociology and literary studies to spotlight the reality of Palestinian citizens of Israel across several generations.

The Druze and the Maronites arguably the two founding communities of modern Lebanon have the reputation of being primordial enemies. Makram Rabah attempts to gauge the impact of collective memory on determining the course and the nature of the conflict between these communities in Mount Lebanon. He takes as his focus 'the War of the Mountain' in 1982, reconstructing the events of this war through the framework of collective remembrance and oral history.He challenges the idea that these group identities were constructed by their respective centres of power within the Maronite and Druze...