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 mainly focuses on queer cinema in the Arab region and its diasporas.
As a journalist, he worked for international publications like The Los Angeles Times and news outlets like CNN and Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel. His award-winning documentaries and experimental films include Tripoli / A Tale of Three Cities (2024), Al-Atlal (The Ruins) (2021), Here I am ... Here you are (2016), and 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) (2012), and have screened at international film festivals and venues like the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA), Centre Pompidou in Paris, Doc Lisboa in Lisbon, Visions du Réel in Switzerland, and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California.
His essays have been published in The Common, Mizna, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, The Progressive, and e-flux journal. He is the author of a peer-reviewed article titled "Queer (In)Visibility and the Production of Queer Space in Postwar Lebanese Film" published by the New Review of Film and Television Studies. His peer-reviewed book chapter "Queer Revolution and the Reawakening of the Belly Dancer" appeared in Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Art from Southwest Asia and North Africa: Beyond Borders and Binaries, published in 2024 by Intellect Books, UK. For more information, visit www.raedrafei.com.
Courses Taught
• Filmmaking 1: Fundamentals (Spring 2026)
• Cinemas of the Middle East and North Africa (Spring 2026)
• World Film History (Fall 2025)
• Making the Documentary (Fall 2025)
• Graduate Seminar: Gender & Sexuality in Arab Film (Spring 2025)
• Queer Cinema (Spring 2025)
• Film Analysis (Fall 2024)
• Film & Politics (Fall 2024)
Affiliations
Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies
Education & Training
- PhD in Film and Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2023)
- MA in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (2013)
Representative Publications
“Queer (In)Visibility and the Production of Queer Space in Post-War Lebanese Film,” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Issue 23.3/23.4 (Fall/Winter 2026). Routledge, UK.
“Queer Revolution and the Reawakening of the Belly Dancer,” in Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Art from Southwest Asia and North Africa: Beyond Borders and Binaries, edited by Anne Marie Butler and Sascha Crasnow, foreword by Gayatri Gopinath. The Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series, Intellect Books, UK, 2024.
“Hometown: Reflections on a Film Project in the Making,” Mizna, Cinema Issue, May 2024.
“The “Image-as-Madeleine”: On Ruins & Ancient Hammams,” Visible Evidence (Forum Section), July 2023. “Pasolini and the Queer Revolution in Beirut,” e-flux, issue #126, April 2022.
“Pasolini and the Queer Revolution in Beirut,” e-flux, issue #126, April 2022.
Research Interests
Queer Cinema, Queer Theory, Queer of Color Critique, Essay Film, Documentary Studies, Global South Cinema and Diasporic Film.