Lina Khatib is an expert on media and politics in the Middle East, particularly cinema in the Arab world and Iran, Arab television and the new media.

Lina Khatib is also a political media analyst and consultant specializing in the Middle East. She has been involved in a number of international workshops and conferences on topics such terrorism and the new media, Arab-Israeli relations, and media, democracy and terrorism in the Arab world and has featured in media outlets across the globe, including Al-Jazeera, BBC World (Arabic Service) and CNN International.

Teaching

Lina's teaching interests include media theory and non-Western cinemas and international television. In particular she is interested in the relationship between media and identity, both on the social and national levels. At Royal Holloway she mainly teaches two courses: World Cinema, which covers the representation of social and political issues in cinemas in Latin America, Africa and Asia (including the Middle East), and Television and Identity, a course dealing with the way television represents issues of identity and its manifestation through the depiction of sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity, as well as through the representation of international political conflict.

In 2005, Lina completed Royal Holloway’s Higher Education Academy-accredited Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Teaching and Learning (CAPITAL) with distinction.

Research

Lina's research interests revolve around the relationship between media (film, television, internet) representations and politics in Middle East, and media and national identity. She is available to supervise PhD theses on media and the Middle East, especially Arab cinemas and television, as well as on issues of Otherness, resistance and nationalism in the media.

She has written two books, Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (IB Tauris 2006), which is a study of 25 years of cinematic representation of politics in the region (1980-2005), from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Gulf War to Islamic fundamentalism, and Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond (IB Tauris 2008). The book analyzes Lebanese cinema over the last thirty years, focusing on the issue of Lebanese national identity as constructed in Lebanese films representing the Civil War.

Lina is currently writing a book on the politics of the image in the Middle East for IB Tauris. The book examines the way states, political parties, civil society groups and citizens in the region engage in processes of political communication through the use of visuals in electronic (television, internet, mobile phones) and non-electronic (billboards, graffiti, physical structures) mediated forms.

In 2006 Lina completed a short film titled Quelle Révolution, which is an experimental documentary on the outcome of the Lebanese “Cedar Revolution” of 2005, and a 30-minute documentary titled Mapping the South, on the South of Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 war. Both films have been exhibited internationally.

Journal Editing

Lina Khatib is a founding co-editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication: www.brill.nl/mjcc. Download flyer here.

She is the editor of the Journal of Media Practice:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=14682753

Lina also serves on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.

Honours and Awards

In 2007 Lina Khatib won a HARC Fellowship for the academic year 2007/08. As part of this fellowship, she is organizing a seminar series titled The Cultural Politics of ‘Terror’. For the full program, please consult the HARC website:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/research/harc/events/Events.html

In 2006 Lina was a recipient of a Royal Holloway Teaching Prize for her work on online and student-led learning.

Her biography is listed in the 24th edition of Who’s Who in the World® (2007) and the Dictionary of International Biography (2008).

Publications

Authored Books:

	Khatib, Lina (2008). Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris (forthcoming). LINK
	Khatib, Lina (2006). Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World. London: I.B. Tauris. LINK

Edited Books:

Khatib, Lina (Ed.). Storytelling in World Cinemas. Volume I: Forms (London: Wallflower Press, forthcoming).

Khatib, Lina (Ed.). Storytelling in World Cinemas. Volume II: Contexts (London: Wallflower Press, forthcoming).

Journal articles:

Khatib, Lina (2007). Politics and Film in the Middle East. Islamic Affairs Analyst. 24 September 2007 issue.

Khatib, Lina (2007). “Violence and Masculinity in Maroun Baghdadi’s Lebanese War Films”. In Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies,volume 21, issue 1, pp. 68-85.

Khatib, Lina (2006). “Language, Nationalism, and Power: A Case Study of Arab Reality TV Show Star Academy”. In Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture, volume 39, issue 1, pp. 25-41.

Khatib, Lina (2006). “The Voices of Taboos: Women in Lebanese War Cinema”. In Women: A Cultural Review, volume 17, issue 1, pp. 65-77.

Khatib, Lina (2006). “Nationalism and Otherness: The Representation of Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Cinema”. In European Journal of Cultural Studies, volume 9, issue 1, pp. 63-80.

Khatib, Lina (co-authored with Adam Ganz) (2006). “Digital Cinema: The Transformation of Film Practice and Aesthetics”. In New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, volume 4, issue 1, pp. 21-36.

Khatib, Lina (2004). “The Politics of Space: The Spatial Manifestations of Representing Middle Eastern Politics in American and Egyptian Films”. In Visual Communication, volume 3, issue 1, pp. 69-90.

Khatib, Lina (2003). “Communicating Islamic Fundamentalism as Global Citizenship”. In Journal of Communication Inquiry, volume 27, issue 4, pp. 389-409.
Condensed version reprinted in Anderson, Jon, Jodi Dean, and Geert Lovink (Eds.), Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 69-84.

Chapters in books

Khatib, Lina (2008). Gender, Citizenship and Political Agency in Lebanon”. In Salhi, Zahia (ed.), Gender and Diversity in the Middle East. London: Routledge.

Khatib, Lina (2007). “Television and Public Action in the Beirut Spring”. In Sakr, Naomi (ed.), Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life, pp. 28-43, London: I.B. Tauris.

Khatib, Lina (2007). “The Contested City: Beirut in Lebanese War Cinema”. In Neumann, Dietrich and Alan Marcus (Eds.), Visualising the City. London: Routledge. 

Khatib, Lina (2007). “Documentary, History and Reality: Reflections on Jean Chamoun’s Tal al-Zaatar”. In Pearce, Gail and McLaughlin, Cahal (Eds.), Truth or Dare: Conversations on Documentary and Art. Oxford: Intellect Books.

Khatib, Lina (2007). “Bab el-Hadid/Cairo Station”. In Dönmez-Colin, Gönül (ed.), The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East, pp. 23-30. London: Wallflower Press.

Khatib, Lina (2007). “Kan Ya Ma Kan, Beirut/Once Upon a Time, Beirut”. In Dönmez-Colin, Gönül (ed.), The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East, pp. 157-168. London: Wallflower Press.

Khatib, Lina (2004). “The Orient and its Others: Women as Tools of Nationalism in Political Egyptian Cinema”. In Sakr, Naomi (ed.), Women and Media in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 72-88.     

Film reviews:

Khatib, Lina (2005). “A review of Hanna Elias’ The Olive Harvest”. In Scope, June:
http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/filmreview.php?issue=2&id=65

Khatib, Lina (2003). “A review of Babak Payami’s Raye Makhfi (Secret Ballot)”. In Scope, August: LINK

Khatib, Lina (2001). “A review of Youssef Chahine’s The Other”. In Scope, July:
LINK

Book reviews:

Khatib, Lina (2008). “A review of Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Music, and the Visual Arts of the Middle East, edited by Sherifa Zuhur (American University in Cairo Press)”. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (forthcoming).

Khatib, Lina (2004). “A review of Global Encounters: Media and Cultural Transformation, edited by Gitte Stald & Thomas Tufte (University of Luton Press)”. In Imperium, Volume IV, Spring:
http://www.imperiumjournal.com/0pages/40006.html

Khatib, Lina (2003). “A review of Close Up, Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future by Hamid Dabashi (Verso)”. In Scope, May: LINK

Films

Mapping the South (video documentary) with Khaled Ramadan and Stine Hoxbroe. Commissioned by Copenhagen County Project Brændstof. 35min.

Screenings:

- November 25, 2006: Gloria Cinema, Copenhagen

- December 3, 2006: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark, ROUTES exhibition.

- July 22, 2007: Arab Film Festival, San Francisco. Special screening.
Quelle Révolution (short/experimentall/documentary). Director/DOP: Lina Khatib. Editors: Lina Khatib and Richard Purvis. Sound: Richard Purvis. Music: Sami Moukaddem. 9 min.

Screenings:

- August 11 2006: Views from the Middle East: A Kaleidoscope of Identities, Opening Conference of the Images of the Middle East Cultural Festival, The National Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark

- September 2-December 17, 2006: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde and August 31-December 17: Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Coding: Decoding Video Season, Denmark

- November 7, 2006: DocuDays Beirut International Documentary Festival, Lebanon. Official Selection

- April 2007: Doc à Tunis international documentary festival, Tunis, Tunisia.

Other

Khatib, Lina (2005). “Using online learning alongside face-to-face learning”. Case Study funded and published by the Higher Education Academy’s Art Design & Media Subject Centre: http://staffcentral.brighton.ac.uk/ltsn/details.php?docid=8026

 

Email: lina.khatib@rhul.ac.uk