From Cairo, Jonathan will focus on examining connections between cultural currents and political change across the region. He has been living and working in Egypt since 2012, where he is a contributing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, a policy journal published by the American University in Cairo. From 2012 to 2013, he was a Fulbright fellow researching political cartoons in Egypt. He previously served as a program associate for the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force in Washington, DC, and as assistant editor of Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel. A frequent analyst on Public Radio International, he has contributed to Guernica, Harper’s, Modern Painters, The New York Review Daily, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine, Nieman Reports, and others. His research on Egyptian satire has been cited by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Nation, New Statesman, Reuters, and TIME, as well a variety of international news outlets. A cartoonist himself, he blogs about Arabic comics and caricature at oumcartoon.tumblr.com.
Arab Cartoonists Respond to the Tragedy in Paris
PRI – Jonathan Guyer spoke with Marco Werman of PRI’s The World about the response of Arab cartoonists and satirists in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and Beirut. In the interview, Jonathan describes the unifying messages coming from Arabic cartoons in response to the tragedies. He also discusses the global impact of terror and the ...
Taking the Mickey Out of Terrorism
Sydney Morning Herald – ICWA Fellow Jonathan Guyer is quoted in a recent Australian article on Arab humor. In the piece, Jonathan describes his observations of the cultural scene in Egypt, saying, “the one thing I find really singular in Egypt is this kind of black humour … in any of the myriad of tragedies that occur there ...
Comics Festivals Across the Middle East
This fall, ICWA is doodling its way across the Middle East. Fellow Jonathan Guyer recently participated in Le Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Alger, the region’s premier comic con. Speaking on a plenary session entitled “Dis le mois en bulles: La Bande Dessinée et le Dessin dans le monde arabe,” he joined Algerian cartoonists Le ...
Egypt’s Intellectual Situation
September 17, 2015 Painter Adel El-Siwi leads me through his workspace on the fourth floor of a downtown Cairo apartment building. His hands, cargo shorts, pink T-shirt, and Crocs are splattered with paint. Shelves of art, literature, and philosophy books reach the high ceiling. Across the corridor, massive canvases face the wall like unopened presents. Tubes of paint ...
From Beirut: The Origin Story of Arab Comix
August 30, 2015 Under the banner “Picture stories from here and there,” the Beirut collective Samandal publishes local and international comix. For the uninitiated, comix imply countercultural, illustrated tales for adult audiences. Personal, quirky, and rebellious, comix have no boundaries. The underground art spans from word-heavy narratives in ink to wordless sequential illustrations, reminiscent of 19th ...