Academic
BOOKS
ARTICLES
2025. “Consulting culture: Creating Arabian Peninsula museums.” Journal of Arabian Studies (accepted; forthcoming 12/2025).
2024. “Visible critique/critical visibility: contemporary artists and conspicuous omission in the UAE.” American Ethnologist.
2024. “The Affective Power of the Everyday: Trauma, Empathy and the Quotidian in the work of Tania el Khoury.” Tania El Khoury’s Live Art: Collaborative Knowledge Production, eds Laurel McLaughlin and Carrie Robbins. Amherst University Press. Open Access
2024. “Covering Critiques: Film and New Media Artwork in the UAE.” In Reorienting the Middle East: Film & Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, & Indian Ocean Meet, eds Dale Hudson and Alia Yunis. Indiana University Press.
2022 “Exhibiting tolerance: Citizenship, contingency, and contemporary art in the UAE Pavilion, 2009-2017.” Migration & the Making of the Gulf Space, eds Lorenzo Casini and Antía Mato Bouzas. Pgs 21-42. New York: Berghahn Books.
2021 “Engendering change: Charting the art scene in the UAE.” Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East & Islamic World 19(1): 1-23.
2020 “Challenging terms: contemporary art and the disciplining of novelty in the UAE.” Museum Anthropology 43(2): 79-93.
2017 “Authenticating an Emirati Art World: Claims of Tabula Rasa and Cultural Appropriation in the UAE.” Journal of Arabian Studies 7(1): 12-27.
Reprinted in Art and Cultural Production in the Gulf Cooperation Council, edited by Suzi Mirgani, 12-27. London: Routledge, 2018.
2016 “Critique as Infrastructure: Organic Growth and the Rise of Visual Arts Organizations in the UAE.” Ibraaz Platform 010 on Ibraaz website, May 6.
Reprinted in Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey, 309-320. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.
2015 Review of Anthropology and Art Practice, Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright. Museum Anthropology Review 9(1-2): 136-137.
2013 “Producing Cultural Heritage: The Neoliberalization of Arts & Cultural Spaces in Abu Dhabi’s Souk and Sa’diyat Island.” Arabian Humanities 2 online, November 17. Published under Elizabeth Harrington.
2011 Review of Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, Laura Marks. AMCA online. Published under Elizabeth Harrington.
Public WRITING
“Beth Derderian takes the Page 99 Test,” CaMP Anthropology Blog, 2022.
“On the Value and Versatility of Strategic Ambiguity.” Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Member Voices, November 5, 2019.
“Trump’s Travel Ban Punishes Arab and Iranian Expats in Dubai.” Jadaliyya website, January 10, 2018.
2018 “Opening the Pavement: A History of Dubai’s Art Community.” In Reference Point: A History of Tashkeel and UAE Art, ed. M. Gronlund, 45-71. Dubai: Tashkeel Publications.
“Best in Art 2017 (U.S. Edition)” contributor. Jadaliyya website, December 21, 2017.
“Seeing past the rain of light: Louvre Abu Dhabi and the UAE art scene.” Middle East Research and Information Project website, December 12, 2017.
Exhibition Reviews
2018 Review of Cairo Now: City Incomplete exhibition. International Journal of Islamic Architecture 7(1)195-198.
2017 “Ebbs and Flows at Sharjah Biennial 13: Tawamuj.” The Biennial Foundation. http://www.biennialfoundation.org/2017/03/ebbs-and-flows-at-sharjah-biennial-13-tamawuj/.
2016 “On Plot and Present: Review of The Time is Out of Joint at Sharjah Art Foundation.” Canvas (May/June): 54-56.
Beth Derderian 