From Hip Hop to Andalusia and More
In addition to the presentations made by scholars in the conferences and symposia held during the year-long North African Initiative, the project also hosted a number of speakers who addressed the academic community and public at large in southern California. You can listen to their lectures by tuning to the podcasts below.
Lectures
Al-Andalus and the Maghreb: Cultural Hybridity and Post-Colonial Identities
Lecture by Mourad Yelles, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris.
Mourad Yelles is currently professor of Maghrebi literature at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. He also taught at the University of Algiers, Algeria, and University of Paris-VIII and Paris-III. A scholar of Maghrebi literatures (both francophone and arabophone North Africa), his work also considers francophone American and Caribbean literary productions focusing on comparative studies of oral and written literatures.
Recent publications include Les Miroirs de Janus: Littératures orales et écritures postcoloniales (Alger, OPU, 2002); "Figures du «détour» oriental chez Habib Tengour et Raphaël Confiant," in Charles Bonn (ed.), Echanges et mutations des modèles littéraires entre Europe et Algérie (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2004, pp. 131-149); Cultures et métissages en Algérie: La racine et la trace (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2005); "Mohammed Dib ou l’écriture de sable," Expressions maghrébines, Volume 4, n° 2, Hiver 2005, pp. 27-43; Habib Tengour. L’arc et la lyre. Dialogues (1988-2004) (Alger, Casbah Editions, 2006); "Mostefa Lacheraf et la tradition populaire," in Omar Lardjane (ed), Mostefa Lacheraf. Une œuvre, un itinéraire, une référence (Alger, Casbah Editions, 2006, pp. 151-165); "La tradition littéraire maghrébine sous le regard colonial: un exemple algérien", in Nadir Marouf (ed), Le Fait colonial au Maghreb. Ruptures et continuités (Paris, L’Harmattan/CEFRESS, 2007, pp. 321-335).
The Hispanic as Crypto-Moor
A lecture by Anouar Majid, University of New England
Duration: 30:50
Anouar Majid is a leading scholar and theorist of Muslim/Western relations in the long modern period (after 1492), or what he calls the “post-Andalusian” age. His work and life have been profiled in the Bill Moyers Journal and by Al Jazeera, as well as by several national and international media organizations. He has been described by Cornel West as one of a few "towering Islamic intellectuals."
Majid’s main academic articles have been seminal in their fields and his books have all been critically acclaimed. His books include Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World (Duke, 2000), Freedom and Orthodoxy: Islam and Difference in the Post-Andalusian Age (Stanford, 2004), A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America (Minnesota, 2007) and We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities (Minnesota, 2009).
Anouar Majid is also a novelist and magazine editor. He is the author of Si Yussef (1992), a pioneering novel in Anglophone Moroccan literature. In late 2003, he co-founded and started editing Tingis, the first Moroccan-American magazine of ideas and culture. The magazine has been featured in the Portland Press Herald, the Boston Globe, and other U.S. and Moroccan news organizations.
Majid is the founding director of the Center for Global Humanities at the University in New England in Maine.
The Political Obstacles to the Economic Reforms in Algeria
A public lecture by Lahouari Addi, University of Lyon held on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 in Bunche 10383.
Duration: 43:02
Lahouari Addi is a Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Political studies at the University of Lyon, France. His numerous publications include: L'Algérie et la démocratie. Pouvoir et crise du politique dans l'Algérie contemporaine(1994), Les mutations de la société algérienne (1999) and Sociologie et anthropologie chez Pierre Bourdieu. Le paradigme anthropologique kabyle et ses conséquences théoriques (2002)
I love Hip Hop
Filmmakers Joshua Asen and Jennifer Needleman screened I Love Hip Hop in Morocco on October 29. The feature-length documentary follows a determined group of young Moroccan Hip Hop artists who band together to create the country’s first Hip Hop Festival. Reflecting the thoughts and dreams of the youth of Morocco, the film features hip-hop artists such as DJ Key, H-Kayne, Brownfingaz and Fatishow.
From Algeria to Indio
Leslie Thornton and Abderahman Hellal, merchant and storyteller of the
village of Tolga, Algeria. Photographed in 1991 by Susan Slyomovics.
Filmmaker and scholar Leslie Thornton from Brown University presented on October 16 From Algeria to Indio--a series of shorts and excerpts of her projects, all dealing thematically with relations between Orientalism and Americana. The centerpiece of the event was The Great Invisible, an experimental docu-drama about the 19th-century adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt.
