Writing & Scholarship
The same inquiry,
in another register.
Alongside the artwork, Al-Adeeb writes — essays, chapters, conversations, and a book in progress on war, architecture, and oil — and works as a public intellectual and organizer. The art and the scholarship are one decolonial project.
Book in progress
The Architecture of War
The Destructions of Iraq and the Rise of Petro-cultural Imaginaries in the Persian Gulf Region
A book-length study of global war geographies, militarization, and oil economies as they manifest through infrastructure and architecture, material and visual culture, and collective memory across Iraq and the Gulf. It grows out of her doctoral work at New York University (advised by Ella Shohat); a new chapter, developed at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Studies, turns to artists who reimagine the ends of worlds.
Selected Writing
- A Letter to My Daughter: An Archive of Future Memories — Sole author 2021
- The Architecture of the Intimate: Lana Salman in Conversation with Dena Al-Adeeb 2019
- Trauma, Collective Memory, and Creative & Performative Embodied Practices as Sites of Resistance — Sole author 2016
- Reflections in a Time of War: A Letter to My Sisters — Contributor 2016
- Visual-art contribution — Artist 2014
- Migratory Sacred Spaces: (Re)creating Ashura — Chapter 2012
- Dissidents, Displacements, and Diasporas: An Interview with Dena Al-Adeeb — With Nadine Naber 2011
- From Sacred Ritual to Installation Art: A Personal Testimony — Sole author 2008
Conversations & Talks
Movement & Public Practice
- Sanctions on Iran — Friday Night Forums
- Witness — International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism 2023
- Member — Palestinian Feminist Collective
- Member — HEKLER
- Curator — DIWAN: SWANA Futurisms