Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
College of Liberal Arts
Twin Cities
Award Year
2024
University Award
McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
No Monument Location
Future Imperfect: Fictions of Security in the Neoliberal Middle East
Neoliberal political economies have radically changed the ways Middle Eastern governments think of risk, security, and the management of the future and of their populations. In the past 30 years, artists, writers, and filmmakers have responded to the proliferation of technologies of surveillance, preemption, risk management, and financialization by composing competing fictions of risk and safety in their works. This project adopts a regional lens to examine how cultural production responds to neoliberal logics of governance.