Invited Talk: "The Creation of a Season: Sensuality, Sensibilities, and the 'Summer' in Lebanese Tourism." Invited Talk in the Media Studies Program, American University of Beirut. Feb 2016.
In this talk I explore a question still not well developed in studies of Lebanon - nor of tourism worldwide - how might we understand a genealogy of sensuality through physical mobility that prefigures, and is an important antecedent to, questions of sexuality? This presentation considers early “tourism," through summering (اصطياف), in Lebanon to demonstrate how the nation was framed sensually in memoirs, guidebooks, and early PR materials before Independence that created specific narratives and imaginations projected of Lebanon. I explore accounts of the wide range of early "mobility-for-pleasure" and the various sensualities that became linked with: a season, the mountains, and the role of the sensing body in Lebanon.