Farah Atoui
PhD Candidate, Communication Studies, McGill University
Farah Atoui (she/her) is a postdoc fellow at Concordia University’s Communication Department, in affiliation with the Feminist Media Studio. She holds a Ph.D. in Communications Studies from McGill University, Montreal. Her doctoral thesis examines experimental Syrian documentaries as cinematic countervisualizations invested in disrupting the visual regime of the Syrian refugee “crisis.” More broadly, her research engages with artistic interventions produced under conditions of struggle—war, occupation, crisis, displacement—as sites for critical knowledge-production and resistance that renew social and political imaginaries. Farah is also a curator and film programmer, and a member of the Regards palestiniens and Regards syriens screening collectives.
2021
Conferences:
Co-organizer of Intimacy and The Politics of The Image, an interdisciplinary conference engaging with theories and methodologies of intimacy together with the political potential of images. McGill University, Montreal.
Exhibitions:
Co-organizer of Making Revolution: Collective Histories, Desired Futures, an exhibition which explores forms of struggle and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa through video art and installation Montreal, Arts Interculturels (MAI).
2020
Publications (articles):
Farah Atoui (2020). “The Calais Crisis: Real Refugees Welcome, Migrants ‘Do Not Come’.“ In Krista Genevieve Lynes, Tyler Morgenstern and Ian Alan Paul (eds.), Moving Images: Mediating Migration as Crisis. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448274-017
Farah Atoui (2020). “Return, Recollect, Imagine: Decolonizing Images, Reclaiming Palestine,” Postcolonial Directions in Education, 9(1), 8-42. https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/57837
Farah Atoui and Nour Ouayda (2020). “Surgissements: Poétiques de l’image video.” Hors champ, Mai/Juin https://www.horschamp.qc.ca/spip.php?article924
Screening:
Co-organizer of Beirut over and over again, a solidarity and fundraising outdoor screening of short films from/on Beirut, Montreal.
2018-2019
Co-organizer of The Political Imaginary of Waiting, (2018-2019), a year-long graduate students reading group and a public screening/lecture series exploring the politics, poetics and aesthetics of waiting through the lens of media and communication studies. This project culminated with a workshop led by guest artists Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas on decolonial artistic practices and political activism.
Research assistant on Nakba Archive: Fragments from the Palestinian Expulsion (2018-2019), a book project examining the cultural and political significance of Palestinian refugee oral histories.
2016
Publication (article):
Farah Atoui (2016). Appropriate, Remix, Erase, Zoom in: The Transformative Power of Filmmaking in Kamal Al Jafari’ s Recollection. Offscreen, 20 (10)
