The Arts of Resistance: Graffiti and Its Afterlife on Social Media

Luma Mousa

Advisor: Alison Landsberg, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Nathaniel Greenberg, Yasemin Ipek

Online Location, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/94530523095pwd=DCeKkS3aMbJtaw0EyPcKuidT6nTabY.1
November 13, 2026, 09:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Abstract:

Drawing on a mixed-methods approach of visual and semiotic analysis, ethnographic interviews, and digital ethnography, this dissertation examines Palestinian graffiti on the Wall and its circulation through Instagram. The dissertation argues that the future of Palestinian graffiti lies not only in its continued production on the walls of occupied Palestine but also in its contested digital afterlife. Palestinian graffiti has long served as visual resistance, political expression, and collective memory, yet when graffiti moves from physical spaces into digital platforms such as Instagram, its meanings, audiences, and political possibilities can change. As images move across social media platforms, they can continue their semiotic function, yet they do so within corporate-governed digital environments that increasingly shape the conditions under which political expression becomes visible. This dissertation thus contends that understanding the relationship between visual resistance, digital circulation, and platform governance will therefore remain essential not only for the study of Palestine but also for broader efforts to understand the forms memory, power, and resistance take in a platform-mediated world. As this dissertation reveals, social media, on the one hand, can amplify Palestinian visual expressions and connect localized acts of resistance to global audiences; but on the other hand, platform policies and censorship practices can simultaneously constrain this visibility. By examining graffiti across physical and digital spaces, this dissertation follows political resistance from the street to the screen, examining the possibility for dissent even as it faces new constraints in the digital world.

Format: hybrid 

Zoom link: https://gmu.zoom.us/j/94530523095pwd=DCeKkS3aMbJtaw0EyPcKuidT6nTabY.1

In person location: Horizon Hall, Room 5223