Biography
Mona Damluji is Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Peabody and Emmy Award-nominated producer of the short documentary series The Secret Life of Muslims. Her teaching, research and creative work engages underrepresented media histories and cultural studies of oil, urban space and infrastructure with a focus on the Middle East and its diasporas.
Mona’s current book project is a history of how petroleum companies have mediated images and ideas of oil in the modern Middle East through film and media sponsorship. She is a co-curator of the traveling exhibition Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Visual Culture and Multitudes: An Art Exhibit after #muslimban.
Mona’s publications appear in Urban History, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Subterranean Estates: the Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, Ars Orientalis, MEI Insights and Jadaliyya.
Mona is a co-convener/co-PI of the UCSB Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Energy Justice in Global Perspective for AY 2018-2019.