At times the semantic confusion can lead to strategic confusion, for example about how to create a civic engagement agenda or implement a concrete plan of action. But it needn’t be this way. Civic engagement can be many things at once. Despite competing definitions, we can say with confidence that it involves one or more of the following: accepting and valuing diversity, building cross-cultural bridges, participating actively in public life and community service, developing empathy, social responsibility and philanthropy, and promoting social justice.

What is its relevance in the region today?
This is a pressing question. How can we channel the energies demonstrated by Arab youth in these transformative times in ways that lead to a more democratic, peaceful and responsive Arab world?

We need to work to define the role of education in this Arab renaissance. Experts and activists alike should be engaging in vigorous discussion about the needs, skills and competencies that can enable effective youth civic engagement and about how to instill them. For this intellectual exercise to be productive and compelling we need to establish a canonical literature about the conditions, means and outcomes of youth civic engagement.

What skills and competencies does civic engagement entail?
First of all, self-mindfulness. This means listening to your inner voice, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and finding ways to connect with others on meaningful social issues. Openness of mind and heart go hand in hand, and foster relationships based on trust — which in turn form the foundation of civic engagement, and serve as a formidable tool for mobilization. Social awareness and sensitivity to justice are also key. Finally, organizational skills: the ability to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound social objectives that can mobilize and motivate people.

In The Cornerstones of Engaging Leadership, Casey Wilson defines engaged individuals as leaders who “demonstrate commitment to their own development and success, the success of others, and the success of their organization.” Their empathy and self-motivation stimulate energy and enthusiasm in others, and serve as catalysts for positive change.

There is a consensus among colleges and universities that students need to be equipped with knowledge of human cultures so that they understand the diversity that characterizes human society. This knowledge needs to be coupled with critical thinking skills at the analytical, creative and ethical levels.

What learning outcomes can we expect from a civic-engagement education in the Arab world?
Civically engaged students will have a voice, and the confidence to espouse good causes, and they’ll have the strategic savvy to be effective activists. They’ll appreciate cultural diversity, be more broad-minded, curious, and passionate about democratic values.

In a broader sense, this civic culture will raise public morale, elevate capacities for planning and carrying out public action, and foster social entrepreneurship — the moral and political courage, that is, to take risks for the public good.

“Who shall guard the guardians,” asks Aristotle in his Politics. We need to train Arab youth to build leadership networks and create conduits of democratic change and liberal action. Educators, liberal thinkers and practitioners should take the lead in engaging youth in self-reflective methodologies. This work is crucial, as emerging leaders will either usher in a new culture of participation or perpetuate an old one of submission and apathy.

At the same time, in a spirit both ironic and creative, we can legitimately ask, “who shall lead the leaders?”

Elie Samia is executive director of LAU’s Outreach and Civic Engagement unit.

Gender discrimination in Lebanon may be less blatant than elsewhere in the region, but it takes insidious forms. It has made its way into our popular music, and from there seeps into the minds of fools who, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, digest “art into pedantry.” Something as seemingly trivial as pop music can indeed strengthen gender discrimination and affect the economy, society, and women’s already weak self-image in a patriarchal culture.

Nordic countries Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, top the charts in gender equality, and countries such as U.A.E., Kuwait, Tunisia, and Bahrain now lead the Arab world. “Low gender gaps are directly correlated with high economic competitiveness,” says Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Schwab goes on to add the corollary conclusion: “Women and girls must be treated equally if a country is to grow and prosper.”

Judging only from appearances, one might conclude that Lebanese women already enjoy the freedom to pursue their chosen careers. But how many, for example, participate in politics — the shaping force of a country? Many job markets are effectively off-limits to women. When asked, many men say that it’s the woman’s fault. She is the one who prefers to stay home, looking after her nails and hair instead of running a political race. But if laws are drafted forbidding any government coalition from including less than 40% females, then women may feel encouraged to toss out their nail-files and join the race.

Lebanese pop and folk songs treat women, in many contexts, as a controlled commodity in a country that prides itself variously as an entrepreneurial hub, a global party destination, and a breaker of world records. These competitive instincts and sources of national pride could use some rechanneling. Instead of striving to get Lebanon into the Guinness World Records for the world’s largest tabbouli or hummos plates (culturally significant as such things may be), we should be competing with the world’s most advanced nations for gender egalitarianism. Our regional reputation for liberated and enlightened women is something of a Mediterranean mirage. We are liberated consumers, free to shop, go out, be seen, dress and behave boldly and extravagantly. We are not, however, achieving parity in education, power and influence.

Any diagnosis of this condition must begin by looking at our self-image, and it is here that popular culture — music in particular — can be most pernicious. Pop music hooks into us: it sets the rhythms and verbal refrains of our thoughts when we hum and sing along; we take it into our bodies when we dance. “The Republic of My Heart,” sung by Mohammad Iskandar, resolves its apparent concerns about workplace harassment by suggesting that women should be pampered and kept at home instead of encouraged to hold jobs. The lyrics sounds addressed to a lover, while the video-clip shows Iskandar addressing his daughter. Women and girls are thereby conflated, with both being told that “sheghlik albī w ‘aṭftī w-hanānī, mā raḥ urdā bi-ayyā shī tānī” (“your work consists of tending to my heart, love, and care, and I will not accept anything else”). Men hear that they are justified in what they’re already doing: women then should feel happy that the men in their lives — fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, even uncles and cousins — are exercising this unsolicited control over them. The domain of this supposedly benevolent male sovereignty can then extend to what women wear, whom they befriend, and other minute details of their lives which many songs by Iskandar and others address.

In Desire, Self, Mind, and the Psychotherapies, R. Colman Curtis discusses how the gap between the ideal self and reality causes great dissatisfaction in the individual, and how the media is responsible for creating this illusion of the accessibility of this ideal self. In other words, television, radio, magazines, and other media present an ideal self, and create the self-loathing we feel for failing to meet that standard. What about when the opposite is true: When the media trivializes what we’d been raised to believe was an important goal in our lives? My parents raised me to regard education as the only acceptable weapon for self-defense in a highly competitive world, as the sine qua non of success. Still, I see people at almost every family wedding dancing to songs that many educated people consider degrading — to say the least — to these very ideals.

Shouldn’t this stop? What are the ramifications of these kinds of lyrics on our culture? “Al-musiqa al-musi’a” — “detrimental” music, as Dr. Eliya Francis at the Lebanese University School of Education puts it — pervades uncritical minds and, I would argue, arouses emotions through melody and rhythm that facilitate the internalization of its lyrical message, which happens to be a dangerous one.

Can there be a critical aesthetics of Lebanese pop music? Do the standards of taste involve only rhythm and melody, or do they extend to lyrics as well? What do low standards in the realm of lyrics convey about a culture? Those are questions applicable to a range of musical genres, including rap, reggae, and rock, and the prolegomena of this op-ed are merely prefatory to a larger work in progress. Examination of the impact of pop lyrics on Lebanese culture and ideals is necessary in an era of consumerism, when plastic — in every sense — has become the basic tissue of our culture. 

Abir Ward is a part time English instructor at LAU Beirut. To contact her please email:  abir.ward@lau.edu.lb.

When a single member jealously guards resources, for example, the result is often failure of the family business, with all of its attendant consequences for family relationships. For a family business to mature and pass down successfully to the next generation, its founder must have other considerations than the drive for money and control. Even if his ultimate intention is to hand over the reins to a single offspring, proper consultation with other members of the family and fair distribution of family wealth are crucial to success.

My research into family businesses that fracture or disintegrate due to mismanagement suggests that much of the time, the core problem is greed on the part of the founder — or principle player — once the business has achieved a measure of success. Destructive actions may be prompted, for example, by a belief that his branch of the family is being exploited by another, especially if the latter is led by a passive or less knowledgeable partner who nevertheless inherited an equal position.

The Gucci family business provides a case in point. The man who made the family name an international symbol of luxury and sophistication was Aldo Gucci, but it was his father Guccio who founded the House of Gucci. When Guccio was alive, he played his sons off of one another (believing fraternal competition would be an entrepreneurial stimulant), and when the time came to pass on the family business, he gave two of his three sons, Aldo and Rodolfo, 50% shares, excluding not only the third son but also the hard-working daughter, Grimalda.

The subsequent disintegration of the family is almost Shakespearian in its scope. Greedy and power-hungry, and convinced that Rodolfo’s share was wholly out of proportion with his somnolent contribution to the family business, Aldo began pooling company resources to start a business with his sons, using the Gucci name. Quarrels between Aldo and Rodolfo gripped the family, and were brought to a head when Rodolfo’s son accused his uncle Aldo of tax evasion. Aldo lost his chairmanship and ultimately went to jail, Grimalda sued her brothers, Rodolfo’s son was killed by a hitman hired by his wife, and the Gucci group, besieged by 18 lawsuits, was sold to Louis Vuitton – Moët Hennessy.

Unchecked greed is a dangerous stimulant for family business in the best of times. When the business is handed on to the second generation it can become particularly toxic. Families should consolidate and rely upon their family value system, while working in parallel on a governance plan that balances a business ethos on one side with familial collectivism on the other. Families should scrupulously avoid letting their boards of directors become battlefields, and focus instead on encouraging members of the board to work together effectively for the collective good. Successful family businesses create forums of communication at the family level, taking care to maintain fairness in the process.

Leaders of family businesses, finally, should avoid relying excessively on their own perceptions and counsel, and instead solicit input and feedback from a wide network of involved family members. And they should do all they can to sideline and contain greed, especially in points of transition between generations.  

Dr. Josiane Fahed-Sreih is an associate professor at the School of Business on the Byblos campus and the director of LAU's Institute of Family and Entrepreneurial Business.

The limited print 12 stamps profile cultural icons that were selected by the Ministry of Communications.

The series includes singer Fayrouz, poet Said Akl, singer Sabah, dance troupe Caracalla, actor Nabih Abou El-Hossn, comedian Hassan Alaa Eddine (aka, Chouchou), sculptors the Basbous brothers, and actor and singer Wadih El Safi.

“It was important for me to show the spirit of the artist for whom I was designing the stamp,” says Mikdashi, who is a part-time lecturer at LAU’s Department of Graphic Design.

The stamps set the cultural figures against a brightly colored background. The images were all sourced from archive materials found by Mikdashi.

“I didn’t want the image to be too far from who the person is now, but I thought they should be very graceful figures. For example, Fayrouz is not smiling, but you see her smile in the movement of her hair or the shape of her lips.”

The stamps are part of an ongoing initiative by the Ministry of Communications to raise the profile of Lebanon’s historical and cultural importance.

The set was heralded as “a great success” by Hind Fadel, the marketing director of Liban Post. “Everyone has a youthful memory of the people featured in the collection, so they all feel invested in the stamps,” Fadel adds.

Mikdashi designed her first set of stamps about the liberation of South Lebanon for Liban Post in 2001. Since then, she has designed nine series of stamps, with themes ranging from famous buildings to the sixth Francophone Games held in Beirut in 2009.

“Stamps are not leaflets or posters, so when making them I have to think about much more than just design issues. Stamps have a social responsibility and document some of the things that are almost forgotten,” says Mikdashi.

The process for deciding what is featured on stamps is well planned. First, Mikdashi and officials from Liban Post and the Ministry of Communications meet and discuss possible themes. The ministry then finalizes the theme, and chooses the subjects that should be highlighted in the collection. Each series of stamps has a limited run, after which a new theme is explored.

“It’s not about aesthetics,” says Mikdashi, adding that the design “has to work socially, culturally and naturally, so that everyone is affected by it, and also it must fit on a 2–3 cm bilingual stamp.”

Mikdashi, who specializes in philatelic stamp design, holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the American University of Beirut, and a Master of Arts in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College in London.
 

Zalloua will be working with a research team from LAU in collaboration with Dr. Hatem El Shanti, director of the Shafallah Medical Genetics Center in Qatar, over the grant’s three-year duration with an ultimate goal of preventing the spread of the disease in the region.

“Type II Diabetes is very rampant in this part of the world, and the main reason for that is because we’ve changed drastically our lifestyles over the last 50 years making it very difficult for our genes to adapt,” Zalloua says.

The two main lifestyle changes that are responsible for the disease’s spread, Zalloua explains, are the sudden decrease in exercise, and the shift in diets, which used to be rich in vegetables and low in fats and carbohydrates. A third, less significant, cause is the increase in stress.

“In the past, we used to walk to the market and to work, we had a lot less cars than we do today, so people were a lot more mobile, and our genes were adapted to the fact that there was not a lot of food available,” Zalloua says.

“And now all of a sudden, we have a lot of food stored in our bodies and we’re not walking anymore, we’re not exercising. We’re spending 24 hours a day either sleeping or on a chair behind a screen,” he adds.

Identifying susceptibility genes for Type II Diabetes will allow doctors to target individuals predisposed to the disease and deliver a clear message: avoid certain triggers such as having bad eating habits, and not exercising, or else you’re going to get diabetes.

“Those genes are not necessarily bad, but they are adapted to a certain environment,” Zalloua says. “We have to mimic that environment again, and the way to do that is fairly simple: exercise.”

Zalloua believes he was awarded the grant because of his proposal’s unique, hands-on approach to the problem.

The research team will visit villages throughout the region and meet with couples that have been living together for decades and that lead similar lifestyles, in order to find a correlation between their genes, habits, and the disease.

Zalloua says the Middle East is conducive to carrying out their research because of an aging population that has been living together for a much longer time than people from other regions of the world.

“This is something we can do, but nobody else can, because of our easy access to these people who live in rural areas,” he adds.

In an email last month announcing that Zalloua had received the grant, Dr. Kamal Badr, founding dean of LAU’s School of Medicine, noted that the research topic is in line with the school’s mission to foster “regionally relevant translational research.”

“Type II Diabetes is one of the most fast-spreading and devastating diseases affecting the populations of Lebanon, Qatar, and the entire Gulf region. Its prevalence is expected to reach nearly 50 percent in some of the Gulf countries over the next decade,” Badr wrote.

He added: “Coupled to his [Zalloua’s] existing grant on cardiovascular disease awarded by the European Commission, the grant [for the study of Type II Diabetes] will constitute a firm basis for the basic science component of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease Center, which the School of Medicine is establishing at LAU and its affiliated clinical training sites, principally the University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital and the clinical research consortium being developed through the LAU Institute for Human Genetics (headed by Dr. Zalloua) at Rafic Hariri University Hospital, Clemenceau Medical Center, and other medical centers and hospitals in Lebanon.”

“I am not surprised that you landed this important grant from the Qatar National Research Fund. Hard and smart work always pays off. Dedication to one’s research and scholarship will always be noticed and always rewarded, no matter what the challenges are,” wrote LAU President Dr. Joseph Jabbra, in an email message to the LAU community.

Jabbra added: “I am sure you will, with your Qatari collaborators, bring this important project to successful completion for the benefit of our entire region.”

Established in 2006, QNRF’s stated mission is to provide support to researchers within academia and throughout public and private partnerships.

During a brown bag lecture on March 15, at LAU Beirut, Mouawad showed the audience before-and-after photos of medieval church frescoes that have been restored by the Association pour la Restauration et l’Etude des Fresques Médiévales du Liban she heads. AREFML is an organization Mouawad started in 2005 with colleagues from other Lebanese universities.

Since 2007, AREFML has brought professional teams from Italy and Poland for six-week sessions to restore three churches out of a total of 20 in northern Lebanon (Byblos, Batroun, Koura and Qadisha Valley). The latest restoration in the church of Sayyidat al-Khrab in Kfar Helda (Douma) started last summer by a team from the University of Warsow in Poland and will continue this September.

These projects aim to restore the medieval churches in the hope that they will become tourist sites, as well as encourage Lebanon to develop its own team of restorers.

Many of the churches are from the time of the Crusades (12th and 13th centuries), while others are older, but were painted during that time. Although the crusaders ruled the whole country, “their traces mostly remained in the areas north of Beirut,” says Mouawad.

At the lecture, Mouawad also talked about the discoveries about styles of art and architecture that were made during the restoration of each church. “We are now able to distinguish styles of painting (Byzantine or local),” she explains. She says the frescoes are also revealing “a mixture of Lebanese and oriental saints with European saints.” For example, the Embriashi family from Genoa, Italy, that ruled Byblos had images of Genoa’s patron saint, Saint Laurence, painted in local churches.

Mouawad says, “The important thing is not only to restore [a fresco], but to restore properly — in the way it was at the time it was built. If you restore it badly, it doesn’t have its value anymore.”

Old mosques and madrasas in Tripoli also need restoration, says Mouawad, adding “We have not only in terms of churches and frescoes but in general in Lebanon an architectural patrimony that should really be taken care of.”

Mouawad’s interest in the subject was sparked by her Ph.D. studies on Syriac history under Dominican Father Jean Maurice Fiey at the Université Saint-Joseph, in Lebanon.

In addition to her work with the frescoes, Mouawad has done research on other topics related to Christian and Muslim minorities in the Middle East in Medieval and Ottoman times.

If you are interested in funding upcoming frescoes’ restoration projects, please email Dr. Mouawad.

Starting in April, Zebian will begin publishing a monthly column, called “The Amazing Brain: Brain Science and Society,” examining cognitive functions. The column will appear in The Monthly, a Beirut-based research and statistics-oriented journal that covers topics ranging from political and social issues to matters concerning science and health.

“I don’t know if science is king in our country — it probably isn’t — but there is a bit of leeway and acceptance that scientists are saying something that we should pay attention to,” says Zebian.

“The more perspectives you have on issues of public interest, the better,” Zebian says, explaining that her column will offer an alternative, scientific perspective on issues of public concern such as how to boost brain potential across the life span.

Other topics to be explored are how Botox and plastic surgery affect the brain systems that regulate emotion and one’s sense of well-being, and how institutionalized prejudice rewires our neurons and makes some behaviors hard to change.

The study of the brain remains relatively new and unexplored with only eight known cognitive and neuro scientists in Lebanon.

But despite being in its infancy, Zebian explains scientists are making “revolutionary” discoveries that fly in the face of the conventional beliefs that the biological nature of the brain cannot be altered.

As more research is conducted, scientists may be able to discover cures to genetic conditions derived from the brain that were once believed to be irreversible.

“The brain is plastic,” Zebian says, “and that means we should think a bit more flexibly about the potential to change the brains of people after accidents, of people with old age, with learning disabilities, people that have bad habits and addictions, mental illnesses, and of people who just want to get smarter.”

While Zebian’s professional interests extend far and wide, one of her main focus points for research lies in the study of autobiographical memories and what affects how we organize our personal memories.

Through her collaborative research, she has discovered that unlike individuals in nearly all other societies, Lebanese people more often than not base their memories on historical and political events — a phenomenon attributed to the country’s long and chaotic period of war and instability.

The “living-in-history effect,” as Zebian calls it, means that rather than benchmarking significant moments in a person’s life using a personal timeline, the Lebanese instead tend to organize memories of themselves against battles, invasions, assassinations and other political and historical events that are irrelevant to their personal events.

“So the question is: Why are these memories getting bumped out and why are historical events being substituted in?” Zebian says. “Mentally, why does that happen? What’s the purpose for it? And we really don’t know.”

The topic will feature in an upcoming column of The Monthly, and is examined more deeply in a co-authored study Zebian conducted with a Canadian colleague that will soon be published in an international journal.

No clear explanation can be offered for the “living-in-history effect,” nor why it affects some societies and not others, until more research can be developed, but Zebian believes the consequences of this effect are nothing to scoff at.

“When cultural events reach down into your brain to reorganize your memory, that’s really deep,” says Zebian. “When memories are reorganized, other things happen to you — your daily practices and the fabric of your life changes, and that really affects you.”

During a public lecture on January 20 at LAU Beirut to present his findings as Euro Arab Chair for Renewable Energies, Houri explained that contrary to what he expected and hoped for, coughing up extra cash to purchase a hybrid car might not make economic sense. He used a special calculator to generate consumer costs based on individual driving habits.

“I felt that I was going to come up with a certain conclusion, but I arrived at a completely different one,” Houri said. “This is what research is all about.”

In one scenario comparing a regular car with a hybrid car that costs $3,000 more, it would take a driver almost 10 years to recover the extra cost based on average driving of 15,000 kilometers per year and current gas prices.

“That is not a happy thought,” Houri said, adding that despite our concern for the environment, our decisions are always motivated by economic realities.

Houri also called on the Lebanese government to encourage consumers to move away from wasteful cars by placing heavy taxes on gas guzzlers and offering financial incentives for purchasing more efficient cars.

“It is not our interest in Lebanon to promote hybrid cars,” Houri said. “It is in our interest to promote efficient cars, whether they are hybrid or otherwise.”

Read more about Houri’s three-month study in Spain.

“I was expecting this from the Lebanese government, not the Spanish government,” says Lahoud who joined LAU in 1987, noting that recognition for his achievements have always come from outside Lebanon. “Even having a president from the Lahoud family didn’t change anything,” he jokes.

“I am a renaissance man,” declares Lahoud boldly.

Of the three LAU faculty members that teach photography, Lahoud is the only full-timer, and flits back and forth between the Beirut and Byblos campuses to tend to any one of the four Photography I classes he teaches each fall semester.

“This is probably the only elective course in the university that everybody would use, because everyone needs to take a picture at one time,” he says.

In the field

During the 2009 Francophone Games in September and October, Lahoud was invited by organizers to collaborate in the games’ photography contest by working with participants through workshops and talks.

He is also frequently invited to tour cities around the world on behalf of governments and industries to promote tourism through his photography and articles published in travel journals and magazines. Some recent trips include Taba Heights in Egypt, Colombia, Cuba, San Francisco, Cyprus and Argentina.

Aside from publishing work on tourism, Lahoud has also covered some significant events through his photography. He was arrested in East Germany in 1984 for photographing the Berlin Wall, and kidnapped on several occasions during the Lebanese Civil War, including in 1990 after witnessing the slaughter of a Lebanese soldier by a militia member.

His photographs have been displayed in exhibitions around the world including New York, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Dubai and Bulgaria. He is preparing for at least two new ones in Lebanon this year.

A journalist, trained architect, photographer and active community member, Lahoud insists that organization is the key to his success as he manages to juggle his personal passions without losing sight of the responsibility most important to him — serving his students.

A guiding light

In 2008, convinced of the need to promote his students’ work, Lahoud took it upon himself to organize and launch an annual photo exhibition on both campuses featuring hundreds of shots taken by his Photography I students.

“It’s my job to really give students the best education in photography,” he says. “Students are very intensive — they are passionate — so sometimes they give you better work than professionals.”

Some of his former students, Lahoud explains, went on to lead successful careers in photography such as Hadi Halabi and Hayat Karanouh, two award-winning photographers.

Lahoud dedicates a great deal of time and effort working with photographers outside the university too.

In 1998, he founded the Lebanese House of Photography, which archives Lebanese photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and helps young talents organize exhibitions, seminars and other events to showcase their skills.

The center, located in the basement of Lahoud’s home in Amsheet, is planning a photography festival in the city of Amsheet, north of Byblos, this year after it was selected by the European Commission in December 2009 along with five other Mediterranean cities as a prime location to undertake artistic and cultural projects.

Aiming for a minor

Several years ago, Lahoud spearheaded an effort to expand LAU’s photography program by establishing a photography minor consisting of the four current courses plus an additional two courses — Digital Photography and Fine Art Photography, the latter of which is a senior-study course enabling students to create a masterpiece using the layer of their choice.

Lahoud organized a committee to discuss the plan before drafting and submitting a proposal to administration. After a long period of waiting, Lahoud says he finally sees the light at the end of the tunnel, and is optimistic that the newly established School of Architecture and Design will agree to accommodate the minor.

“Many students want this minor,” he says. “Everybody keeps asking me, ‘when is it going to be ready? Before I graduate?’”

If approved, Lahoud expects the minor to be available on both campuses.

Photography courses are currently required for several majors including interior design, graphic design, architecture, and interior architecture. “Every major needs photography,” says Lahoud.

Dr. Samira Aghacy, professor of literature and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in Beirut, recently published Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East Since 1967, which examines masculinity in Arab literature from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Iraq since the historical and geographic turning point for the region when it went to war with Israel in the Six-Day War In 1967.

“Very little has been written about men in the Middle East. Everyone has been focusing on women,” says Aghacy, adding that she hopes her book generates more research on men in the Arab world.

The significance of the year 1967 in Arab politics was her reason for choosing the starting date for the books she analyzed. “1967 is a watershed, I think, in the history of the Arab world … That period changed the way the Arab world looked at politics and, in my opinion, clarified the way men looked at themselves,” she explains.

In her book, Aghacy explores texts originally written in Arabic. “I made a point of working on literature written in Arabic to acquaint the Western reader or the reader who doesn’t read Arabic with these works of fiction that I think are important and I think are being overlooked or neglected by critics in general,” she says.

The book is about masculinity, sexuality and politics. Throughout the four-chapter book, Aghacy analyzes different types of men in various societies and the eventual fragmentation of their identities: the “traditional” man — tough, assertive and oppressive; the romantic hero — especially in Palestine; men living in the context of dictatorship; and men living in Lebanon during and especially right after its civil war, with shifting gender roles.

Having been interested in feminist theory for a long time and also having written for and edited IWSAW’s landmark publication, the quarterly journal Al-Raida, from 2000–2003, Aghacy realized that Western feminism puts a lot of blame on men and projects women as victims, especially in the Arab world, where women are seen as veiled and kept within the parameters of the house, she explains.

Aghacy’s personal experiences during the Lebanese Civil War were an inspiration for her interest in the topic of masculine identity. During the war, she explains women were better able to move around and carry out duties outside the home — such as grocery shopping — than men. And while that was empowering for women, it oppressed the freedom of movement of men. “I noticed that men were really victimized — [although] not in the same manner. They are not really oppressors,” she says.

“The idea that Middle Eastern men are terrorists and killers may apply to a minority of men, but the majority are not like that,” adds Aghacy.

Aghacy joined LAU in 1986 as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1993. She has taught English and comparative literature courses, and also served as chairperson of the Humanities Division. She is a member of several professional organizations including the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Modern Language Association (MLA), British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) and Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities Arab (APETUS).

Prior to LAU, Aghacy was at the University of Jordan as well as the Lebanese University, where she was chair of the English Department for three years.

Aghacy obtained her Ph.D. in English literature from Exeter University in the U.K., but began studying Arabic literature while living in Lebanon during the Civil War, as it was difficult for Lebanese scholars at the time to compete with Western scholars due to a lack of access to research and information. As Arabic literature was more readily available, Aghacy was drawn to it, marking the beginning of literary explorations of male identity.

Reflecting on her book, Aghacy is pleased — “I feel that I have made a contribution in this particular field and I think I’ve opened up areas for other people to build on what I’ve done,” she says.

Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East Since 1967, by Dr. Samira Aghacy, was published by Syracuse University Press in November 2009. A book-signing event will be held on January 21, 5:00–9:00 p.m., at City Café, Sadat Street, Hamra.