We hope you'll join us for the second installment of our Arab Women & Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging webinar series. This second event will focus on the role of Arab women and feminists from the region in knowledge production, including education, the arts, and cultural expressions as well as their contributions and interventions, and how their work engages the rich and complex social, political, historical, and contemporary issues, identities, and contexts of Arab societies and peoples of the region.
See a recording from our first event here.
Moderator
Hanan Toukan is Professor of Politics and Middle East Studies at Bard College Berlin. Her research sits at the intersection of Middle Eastern studies, international politics, critical theory, political theory, colonial/postcolonial studies, contemporary art theory, visual cultures and cultural studies. Her writings are concerned with the political and social roles art and cultural institutions play in our lives; the function(s) of art in international politics; museums and exhibitionary practices; migration and the movement of art objects; and the politics of knowledge production in and about the memories, displacements, racializations, histories and ecologies of Global South contexts. She was previously visiting Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and History of Art at Brown University and Visiting Professor of Cultural Studies of the Middle East at Bamberg University.
Speakers
Mena Souilem is a feminist activist from Western Sahara and a co-founder of Feminist Consciousness نحو وعي نسوي. Her activism is rooted in intersectional solidarity and grassroots movements, emphasizing decolonization and social justice. Mena is deeply committed to the production of feminist, queer, and decolonial knowledge. Her efforts focus on participatory feminist grant-making and supporting young feminist movements in the Global South. Mena is also a feminist writer and mobilizer with years of experience in conducting political advocacy campaigns.
Suban Nur Cooley is an Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research, storytelling, and teaching blend the rhetorics of identity and belonging, cultural and digital literacies, and feminist theory to help build understanding and broaden perspectives of how we define and value all forms of writing. She was the 2021 recipient of the CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award and the 2023 recipient of the RSQ Charles Kneupper Award for her article’s significant contribution to the field of rhetorical studies. Her work focuses on the impact of migration and displacement on culture and global Black diaspora communities.
Manal AlDowayan is a leading contemporary artist from Saudi Arabia, whose practice reflects the transformative energy of a society in flux. Through photography, sound, sculpture, and participatory installations, she interrogates gender norms, social injustice, and the intersections of memory, identity, and cultural change. Her work has been exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In 2024, she represented Saudi Arabia at the Venice Biennale. AlDowayan holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in Public Spheres from the Royal College of Art, London. Born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1973, she currently lives and works between London and Saudi Arabia.
