Description:

Register for the Zoom link:

https://bit.ly/mena-uprisings

This event in our quarterly MENA Conversations series will bring together scholars working on popular protest movements in the MENA region that have taken shape since the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011, in particular in Algeria, Lebanon, and Sudan. Specifically, this event is designed to help us think critically about the discourses, methods, and scholarly paradigms that have been brought to bear on these movements — especially in relationship to the uprisings of 2010-2011. The uprisings of 2010-11 challenged scholars to revise their understandings of revolution, protest, and political change; should those since 2018 be read as extensions or revisions of these paradigm shifts, or as requiring yet new ones? What concerns and practices do participants of these movements share with each other or with participants from earlier movements, or are there aspects that are best understood outside of comparative structures? Lastly, what challenges — in terms of sources, access, mobility, or otherwise — do scholars face when doing research into these movements? It is our hope that participants from a variety of disciplines will challenge listeners to enrich and refine their vocabularies, frameworks, methods, and sources for understanding popular protest movements as they emerge, as well as the collective liberation toward which they work.

Participants:

Sami Hermez is the director of the Liberal Arts Program and associate professor in residence of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (2017).

Muriam Haleh Davis is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of Markets of Civilization: Racial Capitalism and Islam in Algeria (forthcoming in September 2022).

Nisrin Elamin is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Bryn Mawr College. Her work explores the relationship between land, belonging, migration and geopolitics in post-secession Sudan and the broader Sahel region.

Moderator:

Jessica Winegar is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Core Faculty in the Middle East and North African Studies Program, and Director of the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University.