Sabah Haider, Ph.D.
Cultural and Visual Anthropologist
Films / Photography / Writing / Teaching / UX Research / News
Pictured above, an image from my Phd dissertation in progress
PHD IN PROGRESS ...
I am a Phd Candidate at Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society & Culture, Concordia University, Montreal, in joint-supervision (co-tutelle) with the Department of Social Anthropology and Ethnology, Paris, France.
RESEARCH AFFILIATIONS
At Concordia University I'm a researcher at the Global Emergent Media Lab, at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.
I'm also part of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture.
At the EHESS, I'm a part of the IRIS - Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire research institute.
Click here to see my teaching history.
Pictured above, an image from my "Excavating The Invisible" series
SOME MUSINGS ...
[Western] Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be: The emergence of a revolutionary and post-modern Palestinian cinema in the 1970s / Amplab.ca (Spring 2015)
SELECTED ARTICLES ON ARAB CINEMA ...
Venice Premiere for Syrian War Film: an interview with Soudade Kaadan / Le Monde Diplomatique / English Edition (Sept 2018)
TIFF Review: My Love Awaits Me By The Sea / ReOrient Magazine
September 2013
“A different kind of occupation”: an interview with Elia Suleiman / Electronic Intifada (Feb, 2010)
"Palestinian cinema is a cause": Interview with Hany Abu Assad /
The Electronic Intifada
March 7, 2010
Palestine Already Exists On Film /
Le Monde Diplomatique / English Edition
February 2010
SELECTED TALKS/CONFERENCE PAPERS/PUBLICATIONS
"Activating Palestine in the Prism of Pakistani
Popular Culture, Lollywood 1969", Conference Paper at the University of Brighton's "Radical 60s: Aesthetics, Politics and Histories of Solidarity" conference in Brighton, UK, from June 27-29, 2019.**
**This conference paper was turned into a book chapter and is part of a forthcoming book from the University of Manchester Press.
"Competing Political Imaginaries and the Contested Image: How can we understand the past?", Public talk given as part of the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network, November 19, 2018, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
"Transnational solidarity networks from below and the radical post-colonial: Configuring anti-imperialism, the PLO, and literary expression in Beirut during the civil war", presented at the 2nd edition of the Salons du Livre d'art des Afriques: "Actes de publication au sein du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient", October 18-21, 2018, at La Colonie, Paris, France
“Art As a Dissenting Machine” – Personalised Media and Participatory Culture Conference, 29–30 June 2017, London School of Economics, UK
"Hidden Memories: Subaltern narratives of the PLO during the Cold War", Series Speaker at the "Seminar of Palestine in the Prism of the Postcolonial," May 13, 2016, EHESS, Paris, France"
“Situating Children’s Perspectives in Palestinian Cinema” in the panel “Children in Wartime Cinema”, at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, March 2016.
”Anti-Colonial Struggle, Cinema, Legend: The Palestine Film Unit, 1967–1982”, EHESS Palestine & the Prism of the Anti-Colonial, Book In Progress, editors Bontemps, V.; Bourmaud, P.; Abu Zaki, H. (Forthcoming).
“Untold Narratives: Foreign fighters in the Lebanese Civil War” in “History Moves in Slow Motion and The Future is Speeding Towards Us: Palestinian and Israeli Visual Economies and Representational Strategies”, 2015 American Anthropology Association (AAA) annual conference, Denver, CO, Nov 2015
“South-South Solidarity in the Lebanese Civil War”, at the Middle East Studies Association Conference, Denver, CO, Nov 2015.
Public Talk: “Invisible narratives: Israeli imprisonment of Pakistani fighters in the PLO 1971-1985” for the fall seminar of the Moses Montefiori Fellow at Concordia University, Montreal, November 2015.
”A Picture Is Worth More Than A 1,000 Words: Scratching the Surface of Palestinian History”, Re-Originality: Concordia's Annual Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference 2015, Montreal, March 2015.
”The Translatability of Language, Themes and Aesthetics of Resistance in Films of the ‘Palestinian New Wave”, 2011 Middle East Studies Association conference, Washington, DC, December 2011.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
As Graduate Teaching Assistant
Fall 2014 and Fall 2015
Teaching Assistant in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Montréal
FFAR 298 "The Movie Soundtrack: From King Kong to No Country for Old Men."
(Instructor: Chris Crilly)
Winter 2014
Teaching Assistant in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montréal
FMST 212 Film Aesthetics
A study of the aesthetics of film. Topics include film criticism, theories about the fundamental elements of film, and comparisons between films which do not depend on their date of production. Problems of film description, interpretation, and evaluation are discussed.
(Instructor: Julien Lapointe)
As Adjunct/Visiting Instructor
Spring/Summer 2015
Visiting Instructor in the Department of Anthropology at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), in Lahore, Pakistan.
ANTH172: Cinemas of The Middle East
ANTH274: Ethnography Through Film: The Visual Representation of Cultures
Spring/Summer 2012
Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Writing Studies at the American University of Sharjah, UAE
WRI 102: Writing and Reading across the Curriculum
(taught two sections per semester for both semesters; undergraduate liberal arts core course requirement)
Winter 2012
Adjunct Instructor in the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Communication Arts at the American University in Dubai (AUD):
COMM 223: Screenwriting Fundamentals
DPST 209-A: Cinemas of the Middle East
COMM 222 Multiplatform Storytelling
Fall 2011
Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Writing Studies at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), in the United Arab Emirates &
Adjunct Instructor in the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Communication Arts at the American University in Dubai (AUD)
Courses taught at AUD:
COMM 223: Screenwriting Fundamentals (Two sections)
Courses taught at AUS:
WRI 102: Writing and Reading across the Curriculum (Two sections)
March 2011 – October 2011
Full-Time Art Teacher, START
Developed a weekly art-education program for children aged 6–16, in four Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: Beirut's Shatila Refugee Camp, Mar Elias Refugee Camp, Buj Al Barajneh Camp, and Weivel Camp in Baalbek, Lebanon. All classes and workshops were held in collaboration with the Najdeh Centre.
August 2009 – January 2011
Part-Time Art Teacher, Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut, Lebanon, at the
The Children's and Youth Centre