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Purpose: Heavily regulated higher education institutions may not be able to possess the autonomy to produce students who are both college and career ready. This paper aims to explore the role of the Ministry of Higher Education in Jordan in determining the content and direction of general education requirements, the historical roots of this type of intervention and its possible implications for the future of liberal arts in general education requirements. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a critical and historical reflection that combines practitioner research perspectives -- the author is a university president -- with reference to a single case study from a Jordanian university to demonstrate the real-life context of government intervention in general education requirements. Findings: University education is inextricably linked with employability rather than inquiry-based disciplines that produce both intellectual development and technical skills. Jordanian universities, heavily regulated by the government, are required to allocate between 21 and 27 credit hours to general education requirements. Lost between universities that are mandated to have them and policymakers who impose them, general education requirements, as recently reformed, possess neither the ability to produce intellectual skills or career-readiness skills. Originality Value: This paper highlights the importance of university autonomy in determining its approach to general education requirements to allow students to develop both career-readiness and college-readiness skills.

Jordanian cultural space has been dominated by the abstract figure of the nashmi, an Arabic word of obscure origin denoting chivalry, generosity, hospitality and courage. It has become indelibly associated with East-Banker Jordanian masculinity, specifically with national emblems including army, police, and civil defence officers, and national sports teams. Palestinian-Jordanian masculinities owe their cultural constructs to a different set of socio-economic and political contingencies that situate them in the much-poorer refugee camps of East Amman. This article aims to explore how the Jordanian channel Roya TV has afforded a platform to comedy productions that entrench the figure of the fringe masculinity of the dawanji (trouble-makers) as an antidote to the mainstream masculinity of the nashmi who dominates state-owned television and radio stations, and virtually all cultural media of representation. Adopting an affective-discursive approach through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the top 200 episodes of the most viewed comedy shows on Roya TV, the article will argue that the emphasis on the figure of the dawanji has resulted in high levels of physical and verbal aggression and extremely negative portrayals of female characters on these comedy shows which are widely watched by both adults and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

([10]) I The Present i lumps the checkpoint soldiers together, with clear shots of Yousef's face dominating the frame as he addresses the soldiers who are mostly shot from the back. But a plethora of testimonies from Israeli soldiers on I Breaking the Silence i uncover a transgressive regime of: truth other than the ones that permeate many Palestinian films; the conflicted Israeli soldier. The Present (2020), a Palestinian film co-written and directed by Farah Nabulsi, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's film "It must be Heaven" has a scene where a French director turns down the opportunity to produce a Palestinian film because "it was not Palestinian enough" since "the events could be anywhere in the world". [Extracted from the article]

Although no official figures have ever been released, general estimates put the number of Jordanians of Palestinian extraction at between 60 and 70 per cent of the Population following the 1948 and 1967 wars leading to the displacement of millions of Palestinians to Jordan (Khirfan 2019; Monroe 2018). Thus, while nationality law and 07 MCP 15.3 Al-Mahadin 381-384.indd 383 07/12/19 12:04 PM Salam Al-Mahadin 384 International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics sexual harassment might initially seem disparate, a deeper analysis reveals them to exist on the same ethno-nationalist continuum in Kharabsheh's narratives throughout the show, and indeed all the political views he expressed in the past. [Extracted from the article]

This article has its origins in a more ambitious project tackling instances of screen dialogues that remain unsubtitled, rendering them incomprehensible to viewers from foreign linguistic communities. Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's The Time that Remains (2009) was intended to take up a modest section of a few paragraphs elaborating on the function of tarab songs in mediating the affective-discursive modalities of the film, but the narrative resisted the oppressive - and deeply regulated - confinements of a representational analysis. Rather than receding to the background, the songs seemed to insert themselves along ruptures transcending the pure discursivity of the soundtrack, giving rise to a question that forms the thrust of the article: what affective-discursive function do these songs serve and how much meaning is lost by failing to subtitle them for the benefit of non-Arab audience? Drawing upon insights from affective-discursive theories, Deleuzian approaches to cinema and Heideggerian insights into the nature of understanding, what follows is an investigation of the relationship between cinema and translation, specifically how subtitles merit examination as a unique form of praxis. I shall argue that songs and some objects in films interpellate viewers on both representational and non-representational planes of meaning-construction that often gets lost in audio-visual translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the deployment of gendered soundscapes on Jordanian radio stations pertaining to what constitutes an authentic sound in the cultural and political constructions of national identity. It discusses the notion that the use of an urban Ammani dialect by some radio stations is being marginalized as feminine and inauthentic in favour of a hybrid rural and Bedouin dialect associated with an East-Banker Jordanian masculinity.

The article provides an analysis of ethico-aesthetics of FEMEN, a group of topless female activists, in the Arab world. It reveals that the group describes itself as bringing together Muslim women who want to expose FEMEN for the Islamophobes. Other topics include launch of Facebook group called 'Muslim Women Against FEMEN,' and political effectiveness of the Muslim feminist project.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the academia witnessed a surge in the number of studies dealing with Islamophobia, the representations of Muslims in Western media and complex realities created by such (mis)representations. This article hopes to contribute to such scholarly efforts by examining the demonisation of Islam through the fashioning of celebrity Muslim ‘hate preachers’ (i.e. Abu-Hamza, Abu-Qatada and Omar Bakri) in British tabloids (i.e. The Sun and the Daily Mail ). Drawing upon insights from Serge Moscovici’s theory of social representations, the article aims to diverge from the traditional approaches of content and discourse analysis to shed light on the nexus between forms of social thinking and the unique portrayal of these preachers in tabloids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the referential aesthetics of constructing the self by some prominent actresses in Egyptian television drama series (musalsal). More specifically, it explores how the self is mediated through the roles these actresses assume, the doubling back of the role on the self and the final conflation between the two. Oscillating between the self as a spectacle (a fetishized object of visual pleasure) and the self as transgressor (the female as a monster or femme fatale), these constellations of selfhood should prompt us to query whether it is at all possible to conceive of an Egyptian female role not rooted in a patriarchal symbolic order or an androcentric fantasy. What these Egyptian actresses dramatically/visually seem to be demanding is to be seen and perceived as the same as the roles they are playing, a coherent self that both underlies/defines and unifies the role with the actress playing it. This article will demonstrate that such conflations have often led to disempowered gender formulations on the screen in the case of Egyptian drama series. Conversely, the absence of the cult of the superstar actress/actor in Syrian drama has allowed for more positive portrayals of women, not necessarily by banishing the female as a spectacle or transgressor, but by problematizing those elements within the textual politics of the script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James is presented. It reflects on whether Christian Grey, character of the erotic book, is a sadist. It mentions that the author of the book has created a masochistic rather than a sadistic situation and states that Grey may appear as a sadist. It further states that Grey is not a sadist.

Hijab and other forms of Islamic head cover have become indelibly associated with notions of inequality and repression in the minds of many non-Muslims. This article queries the meanings and functions of hijab within both Muslim and non-Muslim contexts. It begins by exploring hijab as a transcendental signifier and the epistemological challenges it poses to the gaze. The discussion shifts to focus on the social semiotics of hijab in Arab/Muslim contexts and the myriad fashions and signifieds associated with hijab before situating the hjiab within the western context of the society of enjoyment. The article concludes that the repressive hypothesis associated with hijab is too reductionist to explain the complex and multiple meanings attached to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the sexually transgressive female on Arab satellite channels. The analysis, restricted to two very controversial drama series broadcast during the holy month of Ramadan 2010, focuses on the stratagems by which female roles on satellite channels are seeking to be sexually delivered from, to borrow a term from Heidegger, the 'average everydayness' of women's status as downtrodden secondclass citizens. The conflation between the actress/role in the first series, Zahra¹ wa Azwajuha al-Khamsa/Zahra and Her Five Husbands, which tackles the issue of unpremeditated polyandry, created a zone of discomfort that shattered the fantasy the kitschy actress was supposed to cater for. The ensuing anxiety and trauma suspends the fetishization of the actress in a moment when she transgresses, albeit symbolically and unwittingly, into the hitherto male domain of polygamy. The second series, Ma Malakat Aymanukum/What your Right Hand Possesses², resorts to the overarching metaphor of women as slaves and concubines, as evidenced by the title, to present a portrait of epistemic, socio-religious and political violence against women, who fight back to reclaim their bodies and identities from slavery. Although the two series could not be more different in terms of their structure, quality of production and dramatic impact, they were met with equal criticism for their perceived breach of religious and social mores and boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Arab feminism as Western and Arab media allegedly depict Arab women in contradictory and unrealistic portrayals. It claims that Arab women are often shown on Arab satellite channels as wearing skimpy clothes while Western media stereotype Arab women as wearing burqas. It talks about the problems facing feminist media research in the Arab world such as the perceived absence of psychoanalytic theory. It stresses that the woman is the Word in the Arab world which has a social order subordinated to and constructed by the female body.

In this paper I examine the historical and political contingencies which have produced the city of Petra and the Bedouin as national signifiers in Jordan. The invention of a collective national memory and a utilitarian national identity are inseparable from the power-relations that operate in national contexts. Both Petra and the Bedouin have become symbols of Jordanian national identity in response to crises of legitimacy faced by the Monarchical Establishment in Jordan. Identity construction in Jordan has been based on strategies of inclusion and exclusion, re-inscribing histories, producing new forms of knowledge on groups and sites, and great fluidity and flexibility in response to political ruptures and contingencies. This paper will situate Petra and Bedouins within those contexts to contribute to a better critical understanding of the fluctuating and shifting constructions of Jordanian national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides a detailed overview of the work of Jordanian cartoonist/caricaturist Imad Hajjaj. Role of cartoons in establishing and reinforcing images, cultural symbols, commonplaces, tropes and stereotypes; Knowledge/power dichotomies of the society; Reflection on social practices; Characters and backgrounds.

"The sudden disruption was a poignant lesson in organisational resilience. After an initial period of uncertainty, we steadily trimmed superfluous operations and shifted the focus to the contingencies of online teaching and learning. Although the crisis was totally unexpected and unplanned for, we were adapting at an impressive speed. Operations felt leaner and more supple. There was less bureaucracy and more resourcefulness. We were not doing less, but rather doing it differently." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short piece is a reflection on some of the stark cultural, social, and official differences between Australian and Jordanian handling of the mental health crisis triggered by COVID-19 seen through the eyes of two researchers living in the 2 countries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).