The Syrian Uprising: Local Struggles and Global Designs
Professor Yasser Munif
Emerson College
Thursday, April 6, 2017
4:30pm
Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema
Swarthmore College
Yasser Munif explores the importance of urban settings in shaping national identities during the Arab revolts (Egypt and Syria). More specifically, by investigating the confluence of arts and culture and urban spaces, it analyzes the making and un-making of national identities. While labor strikes, marches, demonstrations, and civil disobedience were vital in toppling authoritarian regimes in several Arab countries, the investigation explores the role of artistic transgressions within public spaces in challenging the deference and violence of totalitarian regimes.
Munif teaches courses on Race Relations, Urban Sociolgy, Nationalism, Political Economy, and Middle Eastern Politics and Society at Emerson College. He specializes in colonial history, racial identities, and the production of postcolonial space in marginal sites in France and its colonial territories. His research engages with Foucauldian and Fanonian perspectives and is primarily concerned with how French colonial rule designed urban spaces to shape lives and identities. Through archival and ethnographic investigation, he explores the travelling (in time and space) of knowledge within the colonial circuit.
Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Sponsored by Arabic, Islamic Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, Political Science, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.