Moustafa Bayoumi’s article “Aesthetics, Circulation, and the Politics of the Restitution of Art from Guantánamo Bay” will compare artworks made by detainees at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay to works about Guantánamo made by other artists. US policy dictates that detainee art belongs to the US government; the article will situate the status of detainee art in terms of restitution.
Moustafa Bayoumi is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a columnist for The Guardian. He is the author of This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press, 2015) and How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin, 2008). His writing has appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, London Review of Books, The Nation, The National, the New York Times, New York Magazine, and The Progressive. His edited volumes include The Edward Said Reader (Vintage, 2000) and Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Haymarket, 2010).