The Arab Spring

INFORMATION

Host institution University of Marburg, Center for Conflict Studies - 6 ECTS

Online class time Wednesdays 16:00 – 18:00 (CEST) | 10:00 - 12:00 (EDT)

Duration 14 WEEKS (11 April 2023 - 12 July 2023)

Language English

ABOUT THIS COURSE

The Arab Spring- the Arab World’s largest mass mobilization protests since its 1950s-1960s national liberation movements - has swept most of the Arab Middle East and North Africa since 2011. How can we understand the eruption and the development of such large-scale mass protests and mobilization movement/s in the Arab world? What trajectories and transitions did the Arab Spring take in the various Arab countries and why? What role did political art and digital mass media play in this mobilization?

This online course/seminar will analyze the Arab Spring in light of the questions of the Arab world’s politics which had contributed to its making and transitions. Also, the course will be focused on the agency of the political art of the Arab Spring, such as graffiti, murals, and digital street art. It will analyze such arts in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

In this course, the participants will:

- the sociopolitical conditions/contexts that animated the Arab Spring

- the roles various social classes and social groups such as women and youth played in the making of the Arab Spring

- the various transitions and trajectories the Arab Spring made in various Arab countries.

- the particular requests/demands/claims of the Arab Spring

- the role of political arts in the making of the Arab Spring

Upon the successful completion of the course participants will be able to:

- the sociopolitical conditions/contexts that animated the Arab Spring.

- the roles various social classes and groups such as women and youth played in the making of the Arab Spring.

- the role of political arts in the making of the Arab Spring

- the various trajectories and transitions the Arab Spring made in the various Arab countries.

- the particular claims /demands/concerns of the Arab Spring compared to those of the (mass) liberation movements of the 1950s-1960s.

COURSE OUTLINE

A full outline of the course syllabus can be found here.

Please note that there will be a preparatory meeting that will take place on Wednesday, April 5th at 16:00, one week before the class starts. In this meeting, we will introduce you how the platform works and we will offer technical support so that everybody is technically ready for the first session.

MEET YOUR INSTRUCTORS

Dr. Hassan Almohammed completed his master’s in 2008 at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, specializing in the theory and practice of language and art. He completed his PhD in French civilization and literature with a dissertation on the Premonition of the death within French “meteor” poets in the XX century, 1945-1992) at Université d’Auvergne Clermont (previously known as Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand II) in France in 2009.

Almohammed was a former professor in at Aleppo University and was a visiting professor between 2016 and 2018 in the United State in UC Santa Barbara, Brandeis University and Wesleyan University. He is interested in cultural studies of the Middle East and the Arab Word, media, communications and ecocriticism. He is also interested in French and Francophone Studies, visual culture.

This Seminar is co-sponsored and funded by the New University in In Exile Consortium based at the New School and hosted by University of Marburg.

KURSE