Society for Humanistic Arab Media Studies (SHAMS) 

The Society for Humanistic Arab Media Studies (SHAMS) is established as a scholarly association dedicated to fostering a rigorous, multidisciplinary, humanistic research on Arab media in its socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts. SHAMS embraces humanistic perspectives, which includes but are not limited to theories and methods from literature, history, rhetoric, philosophy, religious studies, film, art theory and criticism, political theory, cultural anthropology and sociology, history of science and technology, and more recent interdisciplinary formations like media studies, cultural studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, race and ethnicity studies, environmental humanities, digital humanities and related field, established and emergent. SHAMS seeks to entrench these interpretive and critical traditions in scholarship, education, and public discourse in Arabic, English, and French.

Funded partially by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, SHAMS is established under the umbrella of the Arab Information and Media Studies (AIMS) initiative at #IAS_NUQ.  

Join us for the official launch event in Beirut, featuring a full day of panels on humanistic methods and themes in Arab media studies — culminating in the first constitutive assembly of SHAMS.

For questions and inquiries, please contact our Assistant Director, Marina Krikorian, at marina.krikorian@northwestern.edu.