Exploring the intersections of visual culture, design and politics in Beirut from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, this compelling interdisciplinary study critically examines a global conjuncture in Lebanon's history, marked by anticolonial struggle and complicated by a Cold War order. Against a celebratory reminiscence of the 'golden years', Beirut's long 1960s is conceived of as a liminal juncture, an anxious time and space when the city held out promises at once politically radical and radically cosmopolitan. Zeina Maasri examines the transnational circuits that animated Arab modernist pursuits, shedding light on key cultural transformations that saw Beirut develop as a Mediterranean site of tourism and leisure, a nexus between modern art and pan-Arab publishing and, through the rise of the Palestinian Resistance, a node in revolutionary anti-imperialism. Drawing on uncharted archives of printed media this book expands the scope of historical analysis of the postcolonial Arab East.

 Zeina Maasri is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton and a former faculty member at the American University of Beirut. Her work is concerned with the histories and politics of visual culture and design in the modern Middle East. She is the author of Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War (2009) and the curator of related exhibitions and online archival resources. She is also the co-editor of Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography (2002).

2022

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