Maghrib in Past & Present | Podcasts

Les évolutions post-2011 du cinéma tunisien

Episode 178: Les évolutions post-2011 du cinéma tunisien

En 2023, le Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis a lancé une recherche sur le cinéma tunisien contemporain en tant qu’art et industrie. Prenant en compte la création d’un cinéma d’Etat après l’indépendance ainsi que des impacts de la révolution de 2011, ce projet a analysé des des acteurs/actrices et des institutions, des tendances thématiques et artistiques, des événements et espaces, et des succès et challenges qu’a vécu l’industrie depuis ses débuts.

Dans ce podcast, Kenza Ben Azouz, chercheuse qui s’intéresse aux évolutions du domaine cinématographique en contexte tunisien depuis 2011, discute son approche et ses découvertes. Elle essayé de comprendre comment traiter de la fluidité de la définition du cinéma en général, et du cinéma tunisien en particulier ? Quel langage utilisent des membres de l’industrie en parlant du cinéma ? 

Pour visualiser le processus complexe de la réalisation cinématographique en Tunisie, elle examine la production de sa conception à sa réception afin de montrer les opportunités et les défis des cinéastes à tous les niveaux. Plus globalement, sa recherche évalue la place du cinéma dans la société tunisienne, et la place du film tunisien sur la scène internationale.

Les résultats de la recherche sont présentés dans leur intégralité dans le rapport final intitulé « Contemporary Tunisian Cinema. »

Kenza Ben Azouz a été la 2022 AIMS Film Fellow. Elle est chercheuse en anthropologie. Avant ce projet, elle a travaillé avec plusieurs associations de défense des droits de l’homme et du développement (le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies aux droits de l'homme, HCDH ; Mercy Corps ; Human Rights Watch ; et l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) dans l’Afrique de l’Ouest, le Maghreb, et le Mashreq. Son travail se concentre sur la violence des hommes contre les femmes, le racisme institutionnel, et les challenges du développement structurel. Kenza est diplômée en sciences politiques et philosophie de l’Université de McGill et a reçu son master en anthropologie sociale de développement du School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Elle a été lauréate de la bourse Allan & Nesta Ferguson Scholarship for African Students en 2018 et de la bourse Finberg Fellowship at Human Rights Watch en 2022. Elle parle arabe, anglais, et français.

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 08 juin 2023 via Zoom, par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

Posté par: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

Rencontre avec Abdelkrim Elaidi autour de son ouvrage: Étudiants volontaires et paysans. Algérie 1970

Episode 177: Rencontre avec Abdelkrim Elaidi autour de son ouvrage: Étudiants volontaires et paysans. Algérie 1970

Dans le présent ouvrage, c’est avec la rigueur du sociologue spécialiste du monde rural que Abdelkrim Elaidi revient sur des expériences qu'il a connues - parfois de près - pour nous proposer une solide étude qui nous place au cœur de la « Révolution agraire », lancée en 1971 en Algérie. Il les aborde par le biais de deux phénomènes distincts : celui du volontariat étudiant d'une part, celui des Unions paysannes de l'autre.

Le style est scientifique et rigoureux. L'auteur est sans complaisance avec les évaluations chiffrées, comme il l'est avec des questions délicates : c'est le cas lorsqu'il s'interroge sur le degré de spontanéité que l’on peut, ou pas, prêter au volontariat, et lorsqu'il se demande comment penser le lien entre d'une part la répression contre l'Union nationale des étudiants algériens (UNEA), qui aboutit à la dissolution de l’organisation en 1971, et d'autre part la création du Volontariat de la Révolution agraire.

En proposant la sociologie historique d'un passé récent, Abdelkrim Elaidi fait œuvre d'historien, comme nous le rappelle Pierre Bourdieu qui soulignait la proximité des deux disciplines. En cela, il enrichit notre connaissance du passé, en même temps qu'il nous fait réfléchir à des questions essentielles pour le présent.

Abdelkrim Elaidi est professeur de l'Enseignement supérieur en sociologie à l'Université d'Oran 2 - Mohamed Ben Ahmed. Il a mené des recherches scientifiques en milieu rural et a dirigé des études et des projets de recherche (CRASC, CREAD, projet PNR) sur la jeunesse, les dynamiques d'intégration et de marginalisation, le genre, la culture et le lien social en recomposition.

(Extrait de la 4ème de couverture du livre)

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 14 décembre 2023 par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Pr. Malika Rahal, historienne à l’Institut d’histoire du temps présent à Paris, a présidé cette évènement  et a modéré le débat.

La rencontre était suivie d’une vente-dédicace de l’ouvrage.

Nous remercions notre ami Ignacio Villalón, étudiant en master à l'EHESS, pour sa prestation à la guitare pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

 

Réalisation et montage: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

Maroc: Une économie sous plafond de verre

Episode 176: Maroc: Une économie sous plafond de verre

La crise de l’eau au Maroc a pour origine certes des contraintes géo-climatiques, mais aussi, et peut-être surtout des choix de politique agricole et de politique de l’eau, qui ont généré des modèles de production et de consommation peu compatibles avec les réalités hydriques du pays. Pour faire face aux défis présents et à venir, il s’agit de repenser les choix fondamentaux, notamment au niveau de l’agriculture qui représente 87% de la consommation de l’eau disponible, en accordant désormais la priorité à deux critères déterminants : la souveraineté alimentaire et la préservation des ressources naturelles. 

Najib Akesbi est né à Fès, au Maroc, le 5 août 1952. Il est économiste, titulaire d’un doctorat d’État es sciences économiques de l’Université Paris-Dauphine, ainsi que du diplôme de l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Section économique et financière). 

Il est enseignant-chercheur, professeur des universités. Il anime divers enseignements et séminaires, sur les Politiques économiques et financières, les politiques agricoles et les relations euro-méditerranéennes. Ses activités de recherche dans les domaines de l’économie de développement, et des politiques publiques ont abouti à plus d’une centaine de publications à comité de lecture.

Najib Akesbi est membre de plusieurs associations et réseaux de recherche, au Maroc et à l’étranger. Par ailleurs, il est militant dans diverses organisations de la Société civile et de l’action citoyenne. 

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 06 mars 2023 via zoom par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) et s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme CAORC et Carnegie Corporation of New York « Le Maghreb vu des périphéries : propriété, ressources naturelles et acteurs sociaux au Maghreb ».

Pour consulter les diaporamas de associés à ce podcast, veuillez visiter notre site web: www.themaghribpodcast.com

Nous remercions Dr. Jonathan Glasser, anthropologue culturel au College of William & Mary, pour son istikhbar in sika à l'alto pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Montage et diffusion: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

Tunisian Librarians and the Book History of African Decolonization, 1956-1988

After Tunisian independence in 1956, librarians confronted new questions about national culture, cultural development, and ongoing cultural decolonization after political independence. The Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie took on new missions in national bibliography and in the cataloguing of Tunisian and African publications; librarians organized their profession and struggled over its leadership; and scholars and students at Tunisia’s schools for information sciences conducted research in book history and in the sociology of literature. Their projects joined with similar efforts by librarians, book historians, and bibliographers across Africa to work through the history of colonization by France and the new needs of national independence in newly-independent nation-states. These Maghribi and African library histories show how decolonization reshaped book history in the twentieth century, as well as how librarians contributed to the invention of new ideas and practices of decolonization and development through books. 

In this episode, Alexander Baert Young, Ph.D. candidate in history at Johns Hopkins University and 2023 AIMS/CEMAT fellow, presents research he conducted in Tunisia during April-May 2023 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie, the Archives Nationales de Tunisie, the Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information, the Institut Supérieur de Documentation, the Fondation Temimi pour la Recherche Scientifique et l’Information, the CEMAT library, and Tunis’ used book sellers. 

Alexander Baert Young is a historian whose work connects African history, French history, and book history. As a PhD candidate in history at Johns Hopkins University, he is researching and writing his dissertation on African print culture in French and the twentieth-century "book revolution." In Tunis during April-May 2023, with support from AIMS and CEMAT, he conducted primary source research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie,  the Archives Nationales de Tunisie, the Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l'Information, the Institut Supérieur de Documentation, the Fondation Temimi pour la Recherche Scientifique et l'Information, the CEMAT library, and Tunis' many used book sellers. This research in Tunisia will contribute to a multi-site project that aims to tell the connected stories of African publishers, librarians, bibliographers, cultural development experts, and media theorists in French-language contexts across Tunisia, Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, and France. These "book people" theorized and practiced print culture as a battleground in post-independence struggles for "cultural decolonization" and "cultural development," and their stories can inform today's conversations about new media and decolonization.

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 23rd of August, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT)

To see related slides, please visite our website: www.themaghribpodcast.com

We thank Dr. Tamara Turner, Ethnomusicologist and Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for the History of Emotions, for her interpretation of Sidna Ali, from the  diwan repertoir.

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

L'édification de l'état social algérien à l'indépendance : Émigration et emploi (1962-1964)

Episode 174: L'édification de l'état social algérien à l'indépendance : Émigration et emploi (1962-1964)

 

Dans ce podcast, Baptiste Mollard, doctorant en sciences politiques au Centre de Recherches Sociologiques sur le Droit et les Institutions Pénales (CESDIP), Paris-Saclay, intervient sur le sujet de l’édification de l’État social algérien à l’indépendance et plus particulièrement sur l’émigration, l’emploi et les chantiers de solidarité entre 1962 et 1964. 

En effet, à la sortie de l’été 1962, les promesses des dirigeants, des chefs des wilayas et les demandes de protection sociale formulées par les populations deviennent un ressort fondamental de légitimation et de mise en action de l’État algérien. Il s’agit d'examiner ici comment l’application du programme d’égalité et de justice sociale du FLN a été contraint par les oppositions politiques et les mouvements sociaux de l’indépendance. La première partie traite de l’énonciation de l’emploi et de l’émigration vers la France en tant que problèmes publics. Elle décrit le nouveau pacte social révolutionnaire, formulé en 1962, qui engage moralement les dirigeants. La seconde partie traite des émeutes et mouvements sociaux locaux relativement peu étudiés par la littérature, survenus les premières années de l’indépendance. Elle montre que la subsistance et un sens de la justice sociale sont à leur origine et jouent un rôle central dans la formation d’un Etat social algérien nourricier.

 

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 11 octobre 2023  par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Dr. Amar Mohand Amar, historien et chercheur au CRASC, a présidé cette rencontre et a modéré le débat.

 

Nous remercions notre ami Ignacio Villalón, étudiant en master à l'EHESS, pour sa prestation à la guitare du titre A vava Inouva de Idir pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

 

Réalisation et montage: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

 

The Casablanca Art School, Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde

Episode 173: The Casablanca Art School, Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde

This podcast about the Casablanca Art School’s development in the postcolonial era of 1960-1970s, Morocco, was recorded during the time of the exhibition at Tate St-Ives, 27 May 2023-14 January 2024. It brings together for the first time a selection of 21 artists-activists who significantly participated in the various artistic manifestations and platforms, catalyzed by the Casablanca Art School (M. Melehi, F. Belkahia, M. Chabâa, M. Hamidi, M. Ataallah, M. Agueznay, M. Labied, H. Miloudi, F. Bellamine, Chaïbia...). Their multifaceted geometric abstraction itself working as a platform drawing a much bigger territory of action: critical journals and magazines, interior and graphic design, collecting and studying Afro-Berber popular arts, mural painting, street exhibitions… Eventually the CAS proves to be not only one of the most important postcolonial art schools of the Global South but also a social interface, for rethinking public space (through the arts) in Morocco. The exhibition referred to is curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet for Zamân Books & Curating.

Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator « Middle East and North Africa », he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating to explore Arab, African and Asian modernities. He published numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al-Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, Behjat Sadr, etc. and curated among other projects Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, The Mosaic Rooms, London/MACCAL, Marrakech/Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020 ; Douglas Abdell : Reconstructed Traphouse, Cromwell Space, Londres, 2021 ; Monaco-Alexandria. The Great Detour. World-Capitals and Cosmopolitan Surrealism, Nouveau Musée National, Monaco, 2021-2022.    

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 19th of June, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

To see related slides, visit our website: www.themaghribpodcast.com

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

The Politics of Music(ology) in the Maghrib

Episode 172: The Politics of Music(ology) in the Maghrib

In this episode, historian Liz Matsushita discusses the ideas, institutions, and technologies that informed the study and categorization of different North African music genres during the colonial and independence periods. What would have been considered music? Who was interested in studying North African musical genres and why? Matsushita describes how concepts of modernity, authenticity, and race shaped musicology and musical practice across Maghrebi societies and considers the extent to which these concepts still hold sway today.

Liz Matsushita is a historian of modern North Africa and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She previously taught at Claremont McKenna College and earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. Her research examines the history of music and musicology in colonial and post-colonial Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and the ways in which music served as a political idiom that shaped French and Maghrebi understandings of race and power.

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 10th of May, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Posted by Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

 

Les deux Guerres mondiales et l’Algérie

Episode 171: Les deux guerres mondiales et l'Algérie 

Dans ce podcast, Pr. Hassan Remaoun, sociologue et historien, Professeur retraité de l’Université d’Oran 2 et chercheur associé au CRASC, intervient sur les rapports entretenus entre le local et l’universel à travers une communication intitulée « Les deux Guerres mondiales et l'Algérie ».

Par le biais de la colonisation, au travers de la restructuration économique induite, la société algérienne va dès le XIX^èmesiècle se retrouver largement arrimée au capitalisme désormais étendu à l’échelle mondiale, avec cependant ses spécificités dans le Sud de la planète cantonné dans le statut de périphérie. Le local et l’universel s’entremêlaient donc largement au sein d’une formation sociale à caractéristiques d’économie agraire, mais que la contrainte armée et les lois foncières et autres imposées par la puissance dominatrice poussaient de plus en plus vers la forme coloniale de production et d’exportation et au détriment de l’agriculture vivrière plus tournée vers les besoins de la population locale.

La première moitié du XX^ème siècle sera caractérisée par un coup d’accélérateur donné à ce processus global qui paradoxalement débouchera sur l’émergence du Mouvement national puis la proclamation de l’État national en 1962 et les deux Guerres mondiales y auront contribué de façon toute particulière.

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 30 mars 2023 et s’inscrit dans le cadre des Conférences Ramadanesques organisées par l’IDRH et le Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Dr. Manssour Kedidir, politologue, a présidé cette rencontre et a modéré le débat.

Nous remercions Dr. Jonathan Glasser, anthropologue culturel au College of William & Mary, pour son istikhbar in sika à l'alto pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Réalisation et montage: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

The Many Lives of al-Andalus: A Conversation with Eric Calderwood

Episode 170: The Many Lives of al-Andalus: A Conversation with Eric Calderwood

In this episode, Eric Calderwood, an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Illinois, joins Jen Rasamimanana, the director of the Tangier Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, for a discussion of his new book, On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus, published by Harvard University Press in May 2023. In the discussion, Calderwood gives an overview of the book’s main ideas and structure and describes the inspiration behind the book’s title. As Calderwood explains, the question that drives his book is: What does al-Andalus do? That is, how has the memory of al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) shaped cultural and political debates around the world? In this conversation, Calderwood places particular emphasis on the role that al-Andalus has played in debates about ethnicity, race, gender, and nation in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. He asks, for example, why did the Spanish rapper Khaled assert, “Al-Andalus is my race”? Or why did the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish call Palestine “the Andalus of the possible”? What, in short, has thinking about al-Andalus made possible for writers, artists, and their audiences in the Mediterranean region and beyond? Pursuing these questions, Calderwood surveys some of the case studies from his book and explains their relevance to scholars and readers in the fields of North African and Mediterranean studies. At the end of the conversation, Calderwood briefly discusses a new research project on the history of multilingual art forms in the Mediterranean region.

Eric Calderwood is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of History, the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the Program in Medieval Studies, the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the European Union Center, and the Center for African Studies. His first book, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2018. It has been translated into Spanish and Arabic and has won several awards, including the 2019 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies. His second book, On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2023. He has also published articles in PMLA, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Journal of North African Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, and International Journal of Middle East Studies. In addition, he has contributed to public-facing venues like Foreign Policy, McSweeney’s, The American Scholar, NPR, and the BBC.

This episode was recorded on July 14th, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director, TALIM.

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Women in the Moroccan Parliament

Episode 169: Women in the Moroccan Parliament

In response to the February 20 movement, the Moroccan government passed electoral laws that institutionalized and expanded gender quotas at the national and local levels, enabling women to win an unprecedented number of seats in the 2015 and 2016 elections. In this podcast, Delana Sobhani examines how reserved seats in the House of Representatives and communal councils have affected women's substantive representation (i.e., the representation of their policy preferences and priorities). She has worked with Professor Hanane Darhour at Université Ibn Zohr and the National Democratic Institute to investigate whether gender quotas can empower women as visible citizens whose interests are included in their communities' legislative agendas.

Delana Sobhani received her BS in International Political Economy from Georgetown University in 2018. After working as a data analyst for two years, she pursued a Fulbright grant to study the nuanced impacts of gender quotas. Delana has worked with the Ibn Zohr University in Agadir and the National Democratic Institute in Rabat to examine the effects of reserved seats in Moroccan legislatures on women's representation.

This episode was recorded on June 11, 2021 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator (TALIM).

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

 

Les politiques publiques de modernisation agricole au Maghreb : enjeux et défis pour le futur

Episode 168: Les politiques publiques de modernisation agricole au Maghreb : enjeux et défis pour le futur 

La crise alimentaire (2007-2008), suivie de la crise sanitaire de 2020-21 et plus récemment de la crise ukrainienne (2022) a révélé, d’une part, la vulnérabilité alimentaire des pays du Maghreb, et d’autre part, l’incapacité des politiques publiques agricoles mises en œuvre à résoudre les questions du développement agricole durable.  

Ces politiques d’inspiration néo-libérales, sont adossées à des modèles de croissance économique caractérisés par une faible diversification, une sous-industrialisation et une dépendante des marchés extérieurs illustrée par de forts taux d’ouverture de leurs économies.

Ces politiques de « modernisation » se heurtent aujourd’hui à de multiples contraintes : processus de dégradation des ressources naturelles et forte exposition aux changements climatiques, des structures agraires inégalitaires, une dépendance alimentaire, une pauvreté rurale et de faibles revenus agricoles non compensés par soutiens budgétaires (affectés à une minorité d’agriculteurs).

Omar Bessaoud est docteur en sciences économiques, diplômé supérieur d’études politiques des Universités d’Alger et de Montpellier (France) et administrateur scientifique principal au Centre International des Hautes Études Agronomiques Méditerranéennes. Il a exercé les fonctions d’enseignant-chercheur à Alger et à l’Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen de Montpellier (IAM-M) jusqu’en 2017. Il occupe actuellement le poste de professeur associé au sein de l’IAM-M. Sa spécialité porte sur les politiques publiques agricoles et rurales des pays méditerranéens. Pr. Omar Bessaoud est membre élu de l’Académie d’Agriculture de France depuis janvier 2018. 

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 02 février 2023 via zoom par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) et s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme Carnegie « Le Maghreb vu des périphéries : propriété, ressources naturelles et acteurs sociaux au Maghreb ».

Pour consulter les diaporamas associés à ce podcasts, veuillez visiter notre site web: www.themaghribpodcast.com

Nous remercions notre ami Mohammed Boukhoudmi pour son interpretation de l'extrait de nouba, "Dziriya," par Dr. Noureddine Saoudi pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Montage et diffusion: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

Seeing the Words of Poets: Muḥammad Bennīs and the Visual in Moroccan Poetry

Episode 167: Seeing the Words of Poets: Muḥammad Bennīs and the Visual in Moroccan Poetry

Frustrated by the fragmented scene of modern Morocco poetry, Moroccan poet and critic Muḥammad Bennīs pens the Bayān al-Kitāba in 1981 (“Manifesto of Writing”). The manifesto, which was published in Al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, a journal Bennīs co-founded in 1974, set forth a new concept of writing steeped in Morocco’s visual culture. Throughout the Bayān, Bennīs calls for the renewal of poetry that is tied to a renewal of ways of seeing. This, he asserts, entails a critical attention to the work of both poetry and criticism, a point which the manifesto addresses as a sore subject and a challenge at the time for Moroccan poetry and poetics. He offers his own pathway, one that meanders through the visuals of the page, the Moroccan script, and the poetic image in order to recharge the body of the poem, and of the poet and reader. Through his attention to both the metaphorical and physical body, Bennīs recalls implicitly and explicitly a sedimented Andalusī poetics that had also marked the body’s importance and poetry’s transformative capacity through its turn to the language of the visual. 

Lubna Safi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and in the Designated Emphasis Program in Critical Theory. She holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from The Pennsylvania State University, where she completed a thesis on twentieth century Spanish poets and the ways they invoked and mobilized al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) in order to negotiate Spain’s changing national, racial, and literary identities. Her dissertation, “How the Qaṣīda Sees: Vision, Poetic Knowledge, and the Transformative Capacity of Poetry from al-Andalus to the Maghrib,” examines discourses of visuality and visualization in the poetry and poetics of twelfth- and thirteenth-century al-Andalus and twentieth century Morocco. Engaging literary critical, poetic, and optical sources, the project explores how poets and critics discussed processes of visualization in poetry and the affective responses it engendered as well as its role in individual transformation and collective liberation.

This episode was recorded on May 23th, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM.

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Performing Place-based Knowledge: The Case of Aouchem

Episode 166: Performing Place-based Knowledge: The Case of Aouche

This podcast offers a contextual analysis of the exhibition histories and critical reception of the Algerian artist collective Aouchem. It will focus on the historical and political context that shaped Aouchem's work and how their democratizing ethos and aesthetic sensibility, rooted in Indigenous visual forms, influenced the decolonizing aesthetics of 1960s Algeria. The talk draws on contemporary Indigenous methodologies to offer a critical and theoretically informed analysis of Aouchem’s work, situating it within broader debates around Indigenous knowledge, place-making, and politics of space. The central theme of this presentation is to rethink land not as an object, but as a conduit of knowledge. Using primary sources such as published interviews with the artists and their own writings, as well as exhibition catalogues, the presentation theorizes Aouchem’s work as a performance of place-based knowledge.

Sheyda Aisha Khaymaz is an artist, curator, poet, and PhD candidate in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the modern and contemporary art of the Maghrib. Their doctoral dissertation, titled “Indigenous Presentness: Translocal Politics of Amazigh Art and Resistance,” focuses on the manifold expressions of indigeneity in art and explores the nexus between Amazigh artistic production and sovereignty movements across Tamazgha—the ancestral name for the lands of Amazigh peoples. The project theorizes the new artistic forms that emerged in the region after the 1960s, especially script-based abstract painting, which draw upon ancient sign-making practices, such as tattooing and rock-engraving, as decolonial phenomena. Khaymaz’s research aims to connect modern-day instances of Tamazight language activism and Indigenous revival movements with a larger discourse on indigeneity and Africanity. Khaymaz is the 2023 recipient of the Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, awarded by the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA), and the 2022 Mark Tessler Graduate Student Prize Award, awarded by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). Their writing appears in the Journal of Black Studies, the E3W Review of Books, and various exhibition catalogues.

This episode is part of the “Modern Art in the Maghrib” lecture series and was recorded on the 27th of April, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

To see related slides, visit our website www.themaghribpodcast.com

We thank our friend Mohamed Boukhoudmi for his interpretation of the extract of "Nouba Dziriya" by Dr. Noureddine Saoudi for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Narrative Subversions: “Unnatural” Narration and an Ethics of Engagement in the Work of Mahi Binebine

Episode 165: Narrative Subversions: “Unnatural” Narration and an Ethics of Engagement in the Work of Mahi Binebine

 

In this podcast, Doyle Calhoun presents a work related to his first book project, The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire—which concludes with a chapter on suicide bombing, focused on Moroccan writer and artist Mahi Binebine’s (b. 1959) novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen (2010)—and a second book project, Narrative Subversions: Strange Voices in Francophone Fiction, which explores unconventional narrative configurations and includes a chapter on narrative techniques in Binebine’s work.

 

Doyle Calhoun is currently Assistant Professor of Language and Culture Studies (postcolonial Francophone studies) at Trinity College in Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in French from Yale University, where he was an affiliate of the Yale Council on African Studies. Prior to Yale, he completed a Masters in linguistics at KU Leuven, in Belgium, where he was also a Fulbright Research Grantee.

 

Calhoun’s research and teaching focus on the literatures and cinemas of Africa and the Caribbean, especially Senegalese literature in French and Wolof. Working at the intersection of literary criticism, history, media studies, and decolonial theory, Calhoun shows how aesthetic forms provide alternatives to dominant colonial and postcolonial scripts. Calhoun has published over a dozen articles, in journals such as Research in African Literatures, French Studies, and Nineteenth-Century French Studies, and his work is forthcoming from PMLA. His public-facing writing has appeared in Public Books and the Sydney Review of Books. In 2021, he received the Ralph Cohen Prize from New Literary History for the best essay by an untenured scholar.

His first book project, The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire, turns the difficult topic of suicidal resistance into one worthy of analysis, attention, and interpretation. Beginning in the eighteenth century and working through the twenty-first century, from the time of slavery to the so-called Arab Spring, The Suicide Archive covers a broad geography that stretches from Guadeloupe and Martinique to Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and draws on an expansive corpus of literature, film, oral history, and archival materials to plot a long history of suicide as a political language in extremis.

 

This episode was recorded on July 28th, 2022 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM.

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

 

Amazigh Sisterhood in Poetry and Songs During the Algerian War

Episode 164: Amazigh Sisterhood in Poetry and Songs During the Algerian War

In this podcast, Fazia Aitel, Associate professor of Francophone and African Studies, Claremont McKenna College in California provides an overview of an ongoing work on Amazigh women from Kabylia, Algeria. Her initial interest was to assess the way women managed while being principally targeted by the French propaganda machine during the Algerian war of independence. Fanon summarized the French colonial mindset on women in one line: “let’s win over the women, and the rest will follow” (Dying colonialism, 1989). The colonial administration failed to win over Algerian women. However, this attempt to divide women from men to weaken the Algerian movement led Fazia to research whether Kabyle women ever created women’s groups or organizations during the war. She thus tracks here the first instance of sisterhood among Amazigh women of Kabylia until the first Amazigh women’s movement in Kabylia in 2001. This is a work in progress about the emergence, significance, and complexities of feminism within an oppressed indigenous group.

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance of A vava Inouva of Idir for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Realization and Editing by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

 

Watermelons, Dates, and Drought in Zagora

Episode 163: Watermelons, Dates, and Drought in Zagora

Southeast Morocco is known for its oases, dates, and diverse linguistic and cultural landscape shaped by Amazigh, Arab, African, Jewish, nomadic and agrarian exchanges. Today, this landscape is also frequently colored by watermelons and water shortages. Small-scale farmers are at the center of the changes—navigating water scarcity and market fluctuations as the region orients towards global commodity production. This research examines the perspectives of farmers and local residents in Zagora to understand how water and agriculture are changing in the rural, pre-Saharan oases of Morocco, and the impact this is having on local lives.

Jamie Fico is a U.S. Fulbright researcher studying agricultural, social, and environmental change in the southeastern oases of Morocco. Her work stems from her time as a U.S Peace Corps Volunteer in the Province of Zagora from 2018 to 2020, and focuses on the lived experience of water shortages and agricultural transitions in the region. She holds a Master of Arts from Syracuse University in Geography and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in Middle Eastern Studies and Global Studies.

This episode was recorded on September 27th, 2022 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

La génération du Môle d’Alger et l’avènement d’un art moderne algérien

Episode 162: La génération du Môle d’Alger et l’avènement d’un art moderne algérien

Dans ce podcast, Lydia Haddag, doctorante en histoire de l’art à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, parle de la formation et les recompositions des mondes de l’art algérois au XXème siècle à travers la génération du Môle d’Alger. Aux lendemains de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la génération du Môle rassemble une pléiade d’artistes autour du peintre Sauveur Galliéro (1914-1963) et du poète Jean Sénac (1926-1973). Ensemble, ils mobilisent un imaginaire marin et développent une esthétique citadine, cosmopolite et populaire. Leurs œuvres rendent compte d’une algérianité nouvelle qui s’affranchit progressivement des mythes coloniaux. Entre révolution artistique et art révolutionnaire, nous souhaitons mettre en lumière un groupe méconnu qui, à la manière d’une « Internationale des peuples de la mer » a marqué les mondes de l’art algérois et contribué à l’avènement d’un art moderne algérien à l’indépendance du pays.

Lydia Haddag est doctorante en histoire de l’art à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, rattachée au laboratoire InVisu (CNRS/INHA). Elle est diplômée du Master « Cultural Policy and management » de Sciences Po Paris du programme Arts, Littératures, Langages de l’EHESS. Ses recherches doctorales portent sur l’histoire des collectifs artistiques entre les villes d’Alger et de Tunis, des années 1930 à 1990. Elle est l’auteure de La génération du Môle d’Alger, un essai consacré à un groupe d’artistes algérois réuni autour du peintre Sauveur Galliéro. Elle a collaboré en 2022-2023 avec l’AMCA et la Fondation Getty au projet « Mapping Art Histories in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey » en qualité de « Lead Researcher » pour l’Algérie.

Cet épisode s'inscrit dans le cadre du cycle de conférences « L’art moderne au Maghreb » et a été enregistré le 25 avril 2023 via Zoom, par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

Pour consulter les diaporamas associés à ce podcast, veuillez visiter notre site web: www.themaghribpodcast.com

Nous remercions notre ami Ignacio Villalón, pour sa prestation à la guitare pour l'introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Posté par: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA). 

Mobility and Social Remittances in Skoura M'Daz, Morocco

Episode 161: Mobility and Social Remittances in Skoura M'Daz, Morocco

Climate change and migration have a complex relationship, and Morocco presents an interesting case of intertwining environmental change, national development policies, and human mobility. For her dissertation research, Rachael Diniega looks at the influence of social remittances, intangible non-material transfers across migrant connections, on climate adaptation and sustainable development in Skoura M’Daz, Morocco.

Rachael Diniega is a human mobility and environment specialist. She has studied the intersection of climate change and migration since her BA at the University of Virginia, through her MA Human Rights & Cultural Diversity at the University of Essex, UK, and currently for her PhD in Geography at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has worked and done research in sustainable development and human rights across North Africa and Central Asia. During her AIMS and Fulbright research from 2021 to 2022, she completed fieldwork, including interviews, surveys, and participant observation, in Skoura M’Daz, an olive town in the Middle Atlas Mountains. Rachael previously worked there as a US Peace Corps Volunteer and was very excited to return to beautiful sunsets, couscous Fridays, and the sound of waterfalls and irrigation canals.

This episode was recorded on December 8th, 2022 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

 

To see related slides please vista our website: www.themagribpodcast.com

 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

 

Ibn Rushd, Theology, and Morocco

Episode 160: Ibn Rushd, Theology, and Morocco

In this podcast, Austin Bodetti, talks about Ecotheology, a new academic discipline and social movement, that focuses on the relationship between nature and religion. In a number of Muslim-majority countries, proponents of ecotheology have argued that the Quran, the Hadith, and other religious texts impose a unique obligation on humans: because God placed humans in charge of the environment, they must care for it. Morocco, for its part, has taken this argument to heart, launching the Green Mosques Program to find inspiration for the environmental movement within Islam. Moroccan scholars may want to look at the writings of the medieval Muslim jurist Ibn Rushd—better known in the Western world as "Averroes." In the book The Distinguished Jurist's Primer, he analyzed how Islamic law dealt with a range of complex topics, including environmental issues. Having studied Islam in Morocco, Ibn Rushd could continue to inform the kingdom's environmental policy.

Austin Bodetti is an alumnus of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program from the 2019-2020 academic year and an independent researcher specializing in the culture, politics, and history of the Middle East. He graduated from Boston College in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in Islamic studies and now lives in Rabat, Morocco, where he writes about current events in the region and his love of French tacos.

This episode was recorded on May 28th, 2021 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

 

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

Episode 159: Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

In this podcast, Dr. Leila Tayeb, Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), explores the cultural politics of mobility and memory in Libya. Looking at Bousaadiya, a figure who has been performed in many iterations throughout North Africa, she offers a reading of these performance practices as a space in which Libyans enact and contest practices of belonging. Tayeb describes how performance, and specifically dance, creates a frame through which to observe political, historical, and cultural phenomena. Highlighting repetition as an important element of performance, she argues that mimesis of certain practices over time can serve to reinstantiate – or disrupt – power structures. Bousaadiya performance practices, Tayeb argues, serve as a space in which Libyans grapple with the unresolved history of the trans-Saharan slave trade which took place in Libya for centuries and persisted even after it was
formally abolished. Reading Bousaadiya through these lenses allows for an excavation of this history, its legacies, and opportunities for repair.

Leila Tayeb is Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q). She earned her PhD in performance studies from Northwestern University and holds an MA in performance studies from New York University (NYU) and an MA in international affairs from The New School. Leila is an interdisciplinary scholar of performance and politics, focusing on topics including sound and militarism in daily life, dance studies, digital intimacies, race and indigeneity in North Africa, and state-sponsored performance. Her writing has appeared in the Arab Studies Journal, the Journal of North African Studies, Communication and the Public, and Lateral. Together with Adam Benkato and Amina Zarrugh, Leila is a founding member of the editorial collective of the multilingual, open-access publication Lamma: A Journal of Libyan Studies. The article that Leila discusses in this episode, “To Follow Bousaadiya: Mobility and Memory in Libyan Cultural Politics,” is forthcoming in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication in English and is in the process of being translated into Arabic for subsequent publication. Leila can be reached at leila-tayeb@northwestern.edu.

This episode is part of the “Libya Studies” lecture series and was recorded via Zoom on the 22^nd of February, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

We thank Hisham Errish, a music composer and oud soloist, for his interpretation of “When the Desert Sings” in the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.

Posted by: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).