Ziad Abu-Rish is a historian of the modern Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and author of The State of Lebanon: Popular Politics and Institution Building in the Wake of Independence (forthcoming from Stanford University Press). Together with Tania El Khoury, he not only co-created but also performs in the work The Search for Power. Highlighting Abu-Rish’s research on Lebanon’s electricity crisis and resistance movements in the Middle East, this talk explores the connection between his creative and academic practices, as well as his collaborations at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College and Jadaliyya electronic magazine..