From Cairo, Jonathan focused on examining connections between cultural currents and political change across the region. He has been living and working in Egypt since 2012, where he is a contributing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, a policy journal published by the American University in Cairo. From 2012 to 2013, he was a Fulbright fellow researching political cartoons in Egypt. He previously served as a program associate for the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force in Washington, DC, and as assistant editor of Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel. A frequent analyst on Public Radio International, he has contributed to Guernica, Harper’s, Modern Painters, The New York Review Daily, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine, Nieman Reports, and others. His research on Egyptian satire has been cited by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Nation, New Statesman, Reuters, and TIME, as well a variety of international news outlets. A cartoonist himself, he blogs about Arabic comics and caricature at oumcartoon.tumblr.com.
Mad Magazines
Harper’s Magazine – In a feature released this month, Fellow Jonathan Guyer writes about the role of underground comics in Egypt. The piece focuses on cartoonist and satirist Mohamed Andeel, one of four founders of Tok Tok, the zine that launched a politicized comics movement in the country. The feature is available online to Harper’s subscribers or ...A Season in Hell
21 January, 2016 Ahmed Naji is a 30-year-old journalist and novelist. When we meet for dinner in mid-December, he faces a lawsuit for “infringing on public decency” that might land him in prison for two years. State prosecutors are throwing the book at him for a sexually charged chapter of his Cairo novel Using Life, which was republished in ...Remembrance of Things Past
The Cairo Review of Global Affairs – In his review of Riad Sattouf’s graphic memoir, The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984, Fellow Jonathan Guyer delves into the growing legitimacy of comics as art and “the power of alternative modes of history.” The Arab of the Future is the first in what will ...Arabs of the Future: Beirut in the Present Tense
13 January 2015 I had flown to Beirut for the first annual Symposium on Arabic Comics to deliver a paper about the Franco-Syrian comic artist Riad Sattouf’s incredibly popular graphic novel, The Arab of the Future. As part of the American University of Beirut’s symposium, and kicking off the events, a top Lebanese wedding planner had ...Speech Bubble: A Comic Festival in Algiers
12 Nov 2015 Le Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Alger is held on hallowed ground. Between the massive Martyrs Monument and the Army Museum, the white tent city of booksellers, exhibitions, plenaries and workshops sits above the hills, upon a multi-floor shopping center of the Esplanade de Riadh El Feth. The Martyrs Monument’s distinctive shape, ...