About
Nadim Damluji is a writer, lecturer, and curator exploring how Arabs are drawn.
His work focuses on illuminating the history of Arab Comics and how they’ve responded to—and resisted—colonial narratives while importing icons like Tintin, Superman, and Mickey Mouse.
Nadim has presented lectures internationally, from the Arab American National Museum in Michigan to the Institut Français du Proche-Orient in Beirut. His writing has appeared in publications like Kalimat Magazine, The Comics Journal, and Journal Safar, and has been covered by The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, The National, and Middle East Eye.
He is the co-curator of Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Visual Culture, an exhibition that traces the intertwined histories of Arab graphic narratives and political imagination. Online, his projects include Majalat.tumblr.com, a living gallery of Arab comic panels and covers, and TintinTravels, a blog tracing the colonial echoes of Hergé’s work across geography and translation.
In 2010, Nadim was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study comics, postcoloniality, and visual storytelling across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia by following in the footsteps of Tintin. Nadim holds a degree in Politics from Whitman College and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Washingon.
Press Mentions
AIGA Eye on Design – “Discovering a new Arabic side of the comics canon”
Bloomberg News – “Interpreting the world through the lens of Tintin”
Bloomberg News – “Arab Cartoonists’ Fears Relived in Charlie Hebdo Catastrophe”
Al-Fanar Media – “Arab Comics: Fit for Academic Exploration”
The Brown Daily Herald – “Comic exhibition illuminates Arab culture through cartoons”
The Guardian – “Lebanese comic fights for survival after free-speech sanctions”
Middle East Eye – “Daafish: Iraqi cartoonists target ISIS, corruption, and sectarianism”
Al-Akhbar English (archived) – “In Arab Comics, Politics Meets Pop Culture”
Teaching Culture Blog – “Reflections on Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Culture”