This volume is the outcome of an ongoing interest pursued by the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and Europe in the Middle East-The Middle East in Europe (EUME), a research program at the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien, 1 namely to investigate the interplay between aesthetical practices and politics in the Middle East. It draws in part on a conference entitled "Commitment and Dissent in Arabic Literature since the 1950s" convened at the CNMS in June 2013 and organized jointly by the research group Figures of Thought | Turning Points: Cultural Practices and Social Change in the Arab World at the CNMS and EUME. 2 The conference was a follow-up to a EUME summer academy devoted to the theme "Aesthetics and Politics: Counter-Narratives, New Publics, and the Role of Dissent in the Arab World" that was held in September 2012 at the American University in Cairo, 3 in cooperation with its Center for Translation Studies, the Department of English Literature at Cairo University, and the CNMS. Under the title "Aesthetics and Politics" the 2012 Cairo Summer Academy addressed the role of dissent, new publics and counter-narratives. "Aesthetics and Politics" and "Culture and Politics" were also the themes of the regular EUME Berliner Seminar in the winter term of 2012/13 and the summer term of 2013. Seminar sessions included presentations by EUME fellows such as Tarek El-Ariss on "Fiction of Scandal: Literature, New Media and Revolutionary Politics in the Arab World" or round-tables on "Culture, Class, Youth, Performativity and the Transformation of the Public Sphere in the Arab World," where a group of scholars from the CNMS in Marburg presented their work to colleagues in Berlin. All of the contributors to this volume have been associated with these academies or involved in these events and debates. Many have been fellows of EUME or are part of the CNMS-based research group Turning Points. The present volume is a part of this growing network based on common interests and shared commitment, not only to scholarship as such but to actively fostering greater inclusiveness, more freedom, and what the late Edward Said described as democratic humanism.

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