Contested Spaces: Gender, Militarism, and Street Art in Jordanian Cities

Muna Al Taweel

Advisor: Alison Landsberg, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Roger Lancaster, Yasemin Ipek

Online Location, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/98372523261?pwd=TGjACDUpN6CFNyMrOhhCijW0Va82pb.1
November 11, 2026, 09:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Abstract:

Grounded in scholarship on space and place, as well as regional studies in Southwest Asia and North Africa, this dissertation examines different visual practices in the public spaces of Jordanian cities, and how they help conceptualize an understanding of the modern day Jordanian national identity. Using an observational ethnographic method that includes site visits, behavioral observations, and visual analyses, this study argues that public spaces in these cities have become sites in which understandings of national identity and belonging are posited, negotiated, and contested. This dissertation examines two different types of visual interventions in the urban landscape of Jordan: on one hand, the plethora of military memorial and monuments constructed by the Jordanian military and local municipalities, and on the other, public art such as murals, graffiti, and other forms of street art produced for urban art festivals and created by independent artists. Both these visual practices have positioned the urban landscape of Jordan as a canvas upon which questions about national identity are emerging as urgent yet unsettled. The contestation unfolding within visual practices in the public spaces of cities reveals competing forces through which the Jordanian nation is imagined and negotiated.  

Format: hybrid 

Zoom link: https://gmu.zoom.us/j/98372523261?pwd=TGjACDUpN6CFNyMrOhhCijW0Va82pb.1

In person location: Horizon Hall, Room 5223