MESA Book Awards
Kirsten L. Scheid
American University in Beirut
2023 Fatema Mernissi Book Award Honorable Mention
Kirsten L. Scheid
Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920-1950
Indiana University Press
A deeply nuanced and personally engaged study of Lebanon’s art scene under French occupation, Kirsten L. Scheid’s Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920-1950, analyzes nudes as well as representations of patriotic femininity and masculine modernity. It is a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of the roles that artistic creativity, aesthetic encounters and sensorial experiences played in articulating both gender and politics, especially civic subjectivity and national identity, in a wide range of local settings—from art lessons in the colonial mandate to postcolonial exhibitions.