ABSTRACT
Despite widespread fascination with the Middle East in recent years, contemporary Middle Eastern cultures are little known in the West. By cultures, I mean the specific manifestations of cultural expression—literature, poetry, music, theater, painting, sculpture, photography, and dance, as well as popular culture, including mass-produced items, street art (such as billboards and murals), and media, including film, television, and the Internet—rather than in the anthropological sense in which all social behavior is described as a civilization’s “culture.” The purpose of this section is to inform the Western reader about the cultural richness of the Middle East that is not absent, but merely not known.
