Raed El Rafei is a scholar, filmmaker and multimedia journalist. He is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on queer cinema in the Arab region and its diasporas. As a journalist, he has worked for international publications like The Los Angeles Times and news outlets like CNN and Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel. Rafei directed award-winning documentaries and experimental films. His films 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle), Here I am ... Here you are, and Al-Atlal (The Ruins) have screened at international film festivals and venues like the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Doc Lisboa, Visions du Réel, and the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley. His essays have been published in The Common, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, and e-flux journal. His essay “On the Natural, the Obscure and Anal Tests,” was published by Sternberg Press as a chapter in an edited volume in 2015 titled, Pink Labor on Golden Streets: Queer Art Practices. His essay “Queer Revolution and the Reawakening of the Belly Dancer” is scheduled to appear in 2024 in Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Art from Southwest Asia and North Africa: Beyond Borders and Binaries, an edited volume published by Intellect Books, UK, currently in production.

Rafei holds a PhD in Film and Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. In 2022, he was awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. During the 2023-2024 academic year, Rafei is taking a Professional Enhancement Leave to complete a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Davis.

For more information, visit www.raedrafei.com.