Book Talk - Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprisings
What has been the role of violence in the Arab Uprisings in shaping the political landscape of the region?
On April 19th, Columbia Global Centers | Tunis partnered with the Middle East Institute (MEI) at Columbia University for an engaging talk with Professor Benoît Challand, author and associate professor of sociology at The New School for Social Research. During the event, moderated by Tunis Center Director Youssef Cherif, Prof. Challand shared insights from his recent book "Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprisings." He argued that violence played a crucial role in the political transition that followed the uprisings and highlighted how it affected the outcome of these movements.
Throughout the talk, Prof. Challand drew on examples from various countries in the Arab world, including Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, to emphasize the importance of taking a comparative perspective and recognizing the diversity of experiences within the region.
To learn more and gain a nuanced and insightful understanding of the Arab uprisings, watch the full presentation and recorded discussion here.
??About the Author:
Benoit Challand is associate professor of sociology at The New School for Social Research, New York. He holds a PhD from the EUI in Florence (2005), and has held positions as assistant professor at New York University's Kevorkian Center for Near East Studies, associate professor in sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence and professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg. He is author of the books Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprisings (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and Palestinian Civil Society. Foreign Donors and the Power to Promote and Exclude (Routledge, 2009). His work has been translated into Arabic and has numerous co-authored publications such as The Arab Uprisings and Foreign Assistance (co-edited with F. Bicchi and S. Heydemann, Routledge 2016), and Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory and Identity, co-authored with Chiara Bottici (Cambridge University Press 2013). He is also interested in democratic theory, Western European Marxism, and settler colonialism.
??About the Moderator:
Youssef Cherif is the Director of CGC Tunis and a political analyst who specializes in Maghreb affairs. A researcher at Leiden University's Institute of Area Studies, he contributes to a number of think-tanks on Maghreb affairs. He was previously the Al-Maidan Libya Project manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), and an expert affiliated to the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies (ITES). He consulted for IACE, the UN, The Carter Center.
