Scholar, Educator, and Artist Shayna M. Silverstein is dedicated to exploring how arts and culture open a window to understanding ourselves and the worlds we live in. Focusing on music, dance, and performance studies, Shayna writes about the politics of culture in the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, particularly Syria. Her five-time award-winning book, Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria, is considered a standout top of the field book in dance studies, music studies, and Middle East studies, respectively. Fraught Balance offers a vivid and intricate ethnographic analysis of how dance music reveals the powerful contradictions of being Syrian today.