the "Arab Spring" & History and Cultures of Revolutions in the Arab World

الخميس ٢٥ - أبريل - ٢٠٢٤ ٠١:١٩ مساءً

English | عربي

اضيف الخبر في يوم الأربعاء ٢٩ - أغسطس - ٢٠١٢ ١٢:٠٠ صباحاً.

the "Arab Spring" & History and Cultures of Revolutions in the Arab World

The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies cordially invites you to attend its upcoming event:

مقالات متعلقة :

Labor, Unions, and the "Arab Spring"
A panel discussion featuring

Abdulla Mohamed Husain Mohamed
Assistant Secretary General for Arab and International Relations of GFBTU (Bahrain)

Nassira Ghozlane
General Secretary of the Algerian Syndicat Autonome National des Personnels del’Administration (SNAPAP)

Kamal Abou Aita
President of Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions

Wednesday, September 12th
5:30-7:00pm
CCAS Boardroom, 241 ICC
Space is limited. Please RSVP here.

Arab trade union leaders will discuss the changes unfolding across the Middle East and North Africa. What role have workers played in protests across the region? What is the condition of unions in the Egypt and Tunisia after the revolutions in these countries? What role has labor played in the uprising in Bahrain? And how are unions in Algeria, seemingly untouched by the “Arab Spring,” working to improve the lives of working men and women? The rights of workers and workers’ organizations lie at the heart of key issues for the region’s development, including democratic governance, job creation, and economic and social justice.

Discussion will be moderated by Dr. Samer Shehata

The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies & The Georgetown Institute for Global History
are proud to present the next installment of the 2012-2013 Middle East and North Africa Seminar:
"History and Cultures of Revolutions in the Arab World"

Jessica Winegar
A Civilized Revolution: Aesthetics, Political Action, and Urban Space in Egypt

September 14th
3:30 - 5:00pm
CCAS Boardroom, 241 ICC
Light refreshments will be served.

Papers will be circulated ahead of time.
All graduate students, faculty members, and independent scholars are invited to attend.
Please RSVP by email to receive a copy.
This paper analyzes the relationship between middle class aesthetics and politics in Egypt’s ongoing revolution. By examining phenomena such as urban beautification campaigns and Egyptians’ aesthetic judgments of different forms of political protest, the paper highlights the strong civilizing impulse at the center of Egypt’s transformation – an impulse that continues to both constrain and enable revolutionary action.

Jessica Winegar is an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University. Her areas of expertise include: material and visual culture, nationalism, religion, social class, youth, and gender.

Professor Winegar is the author of numerous articles on arts and culture in the Middle East, with a number of recent writings on Egypt’s uprising. She is also the author of the book Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2006). This book won the Albert Hourani Book Award for best book in Middle East studies and the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the African Studies Association. She is also a co-author, with Lara Deeb, of a forthcoming book entitled Anthropology’s Politics: Discipline and Region through the Lens of the Middle East (Stanford).

CCAS is proud to present the first installment of its fall film series
"Algeria at 50"

Days of Glory (Indigenes)

September 19th
5:30 - 8:00pm
CCAS Boardroom, 241 ICC
Seating is limited. Please RSVP here.

Days of Glory (French: Indigènes - "Natives"; Arabic: بلديون‎) is a 2006 French film directed by French-Algerian Rachid Bouchareb. The cast includes Sami Bouajila, Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Mélanie Laurent and Bernard Blancan. The film deals primarily with the discriminatory treatment of colonial North Africans by the white French. This issue led to a change in the French government's policy 60 years later.

View trailer here.

In the fifty years since Algeria's independence, the historical verdict on the social, economic, and political consequences of French colonial rule has remained largely unsettled. The distance between Algerian and French “memories of colonialism” was recently epitomized by the very different, even contradictory, observances on both sides of the Mediterranean of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Algerian war of independence, 1954-1962.

In the two national perspectives of the shared and common colonial history of France and Algeria, several chapters remain particularly divisive; among them: the true complexion of the Franco-Algerian conflict; the legitimacy of revolutionary violence and the resort to extrajudicial counter-measures in the colony and the metropole; the internal cohesion of the Algerian nationalist front; the sanctity of the singular official historical narrative; the status of the harkis, or the Algerians who served under the French flag and collaborated with the colonial authorities.

The films in the series “Algeria at 50” address many of these critical and contested historical questions, and were selected on the basis of their individual efforts to deliver definitive judgments on the still volatile history of French Algeria.

Each film will be followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Osama Abi-Mershed.

The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
is pleased to celebrate the release of Dr. Fida Adely's new book,

Gendered Paradoxes:
Educating Jordanian Women in Nation, Faith, and Progress

September 20th
6:00 - 8:00pm
CCAS Boardroom, 241 ICC
Seating is limited. Please RSVP here.
Light refereshments will be served.
Books will be available for purchase.
In Gendered Paradoxes Fida Adely takes readers into the halls of a Jordanian public School – al-Khatwa High School for Girls – to examine how the young women there are facing the great social and economic challenges of today’s Jordan. The demographic picture in Jordan – with highly educated women largely remaining outside the formal job market for most of their adult lives – prompted the World Bank in 2005 to label the country a “gender paradox,” but Adely argues that this assessment is a fallacy. Showing that the important place of education in Jordan should not be calculated solely through an employment lens, she raises fundamental questions about what constitutes development, progress, and empowerment, not just for the girls of al-Khatwa High School but for women throughout the Middle East.
“Gendered Paradoxes is a path-breaking study that challenges orthodoxies about women, education, and development in the Arab world (and elsewhere). Unique in the balance it strikes between sophisticated analysis and engaging ethnography, it opens our eyes both to the complexity of real girls’ experiences of schooling in Jordan and the flaws in standard theories about why education matters. By far the best analysis of contemporary Jordanian society and culture I have read—taking on sensitive issues of family, nationalism, religion, and morality—this lucid book will become a classic. One can hope that it will also transform debates about gender and development.” - Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
Fida Adely is assistant professor and Clovis and Hala Salaam Maksoud Chair in Arab Studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Please save the date for
A Memorial Service for Dr. Barbara Stowasser

September 29th
Georgetown University
(details to be announced)

More from CCAS:

CCAS welcomes new Post-Doctoral Fellows.

Fida Adely talks to CCAS about her new book, Gendered Paradoxes.

Rochelle Davis speaks to Canadian TV about the Syrian refugee crisis and to Palestine Studies TV about her book, Palestinian Villiage Histories.