Tag Archives: revolution

The Living Dead or the Sonic Story of Male Bodies Behind Bars in Egypt

The Peace and Conflict Studies Department is pleased to be a co-sponsor of this talk, featuring Dr. Maria Frederika Malmström, taking place at Swarthmore College.

Title: The Living Dead or the Sonic Story of Male Bodies Behind Bars in Egypt
Speaker: Dr. Maria Frederika Malmström, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Research Fellow; The Aga Khan University, London
Date & Time : April 19th, Wednesday, 4:30 pm
Location: Kohlberg Hall 228

This talk tells a story of the aftermath of the ‘failed revolution’ in Egypt through the prism of sound and gendered political prisoner bodies. It created embodied reactions among Cairene men—years after their lived prison experiences—in which depression, sorrow, stress, paranoia, rage, or painful body memories are prevalent. Affect theory shows how sonic vibrations—important stimuli within everyday experience, with a unique power to induce strong affective states—mediate consciousness, including heightened states of attention and anxiety. Sound, or the lack thereof, stimulates, disorients, transforms, and controls. The sound of life is transformed into the sound of death; the desire to disappear in order not to disappear again produces ‘ghost bodies’ alienated from the ‘new Egypt’, but from the family and the self too.

The Living Dead or the Sonic Story of Male Bodies Behind Bars in Egypt Flyer

Sponsored by: Sociology & Anthropology, Arabic section of MLL, Islamic Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies

Writing from the Wound: Literature and Disenchantment in Postwar Central America

“Writing from the Wound: Literature and Disenchantment in Postwar Central America”

Nanci Buiza, Assistant Professor of Spanish

Tuesday, December 12th, 4:15 PM
McCabe Library Atrium
Open to the Public

Professor Buiza will examine how contemporary Central American writers have made literary art out of a heritage of violence, trauma, and social disaffection.

Prof. Nanci Buiza

Torn by decades of civil war and political terror, and more recently by the depredations of neoliberalism and urban violence, Central America has been unkind to the artistic enterprise. And yet despite the adversity, its writers have in recent years managed to put Central America on the literary map. They have made a virtue of their situation by submitting their disillusionments, traumas, and dislocations to the discipline of art and have produced works of high literary achievement.

Of special interest in this presentation is the way in which these writers contend with the senseless modernity that radically remade Central American society after the era of civil wars had come to an end in the 1990s. The “culture of peace” as a code of conduct promoted by market-oriented postwar reconstruction projects; the unresolved wartime traumas that have devastated the social fabric; the disenchantment that took root after the dreams for social utopia had been dashed by the failed revolutions and by the forces of neoliberalism—all these features of the postwar experience are central concerns of these writers, but they also pose problems for what it means to make art. How contemporary Central American literature registers and resists these problems is the focus of this presentation.

Doctors of the Revolution: Medicine and Violence in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

Doctors of the Revolution: Medicine and Violence in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

Dr. Soha Bayoumi (Harvard University)
Dr. Sherine Hamdy (Brown University)

Friday, April 14, 2017
4:30pm
Science Center 199
Swarthmore College

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by Arabic, Biology, Health and Societies Program, Islamic Studies, Political Science, Pre-Med Office, Sociology and Anthropology, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

Redefining Revolution & Nonviolence: Re-imagining Solidarity Across Race

As part of Black History Month activities, Matt Meyer, organizer, author, and editor of We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism (PM Press) discussed revolutionary nonviolence, privilege, solidarity, and alliance building in higher education.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Scheuer Room in Kohlberg Hall at Swarthmore College

This event was free and open to the public.

(maps and directions)

Download a flyer at http://bit.ly/meyerflyer

Matt Meyer flyer — photo credit: Consuelo Kanaga

Video of the event is now available.

Audio of the event is now available.

The Daily Gazette covered the event.

A native New York City-based educator, activist, and author, Matt Meyer is coordinator of the War Resisters International Africa Support Network, and a United Nations/ECOSOC representative of the International Peace Research Association. The founding Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and former Chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change.

Matt Meyer at Swarthmore College — Matt Meyer spoke in the Scheuer Room on February 10, 2016

Meyer’s work in K-12 public education and teacher training included ten years of service as Multicultural Coordinator for the NYC Board of Education’s Alternative High Schools & Programs, as well as a stint as Union Leader of a local section of the United Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. He helped found and direct a mini-school in collaboration with St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital’s Child and Family Institute (CFI), and led a psycho-educational CFI research delegation on re-integration and treatment of child soldiers in West and Central Africa and related work in “inner-city” USA; he also helped in the early development of the Harvey Milk High School, the first US “safe space” school for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Twice-decorated as “teacher of the year” by two Community School District Superintendents, Meyer’s continuous efforts as a high school-based historian and peace educator have spanned over 30 years.

Matt is an outstanding scholar-practitioner and leader in the field of peace and justice studies and is an accomplished Africanist scholar and educator, and has done much to bring critical race theory into dialogue with peace and conflict studies. You may read his recent co-authored piece “Refusing to Choose Between Martin and Malcolm: Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and a New Nonviolent Revolution” at Counterpunch.org.

Co-sponsors: Peace and Conflict Studies, President’s Office, Black Cultural Center, Black Studies Program, Intercultural Center, History Department, Educational Studies Department, Sociology and Anthropology Department

This event builds on a theme the Peace and Conflict Studies program initiated last semester with the American Friends Service Committee poster exhibit in McCabe Library, “All of Us or None: Responses & Resistance to Militarism.”

Nefertiti’s Daughters: Street Art of the Egyptian Uprisings

From our friends in Modern Languages and Literatures

Nefertiti’s Daughters: Street Art of the Egyptian Uprisings

Director Mark Nickolas will be joining us for a screening of his award winning documentary Nefertiti’s Daughters (2015, 40 minutes) followed by a Q&A session.

November 20, 2015; 2:15-4:00 p.m.
Kohlberg Hall Room 228
Swarthmore College (directions)

Nefertiti’s Daughters is a story of women, art and revolution in Egypt. Told by prominent Egyptian artists, this documentary witnesses the critical role revolutionary street art played during the Egyptian uprisings.

Focused on the role of women artists in the struggle for social and political change, Nefertiti’s Daughters spotlights how the iconic graffiti of Queen Nefertiti places her on the front lines in the ongoing fight for women’s rights and freedoms in Egypt today.

The film’s director Mark Nickolas is a long time veteran of US democratic politics, most notably to then Vice President Al Gore, before emerging as a prominent figure in the political media world.

Contact Information:
Name: Benjamin Smith bsmith3
Phone: 610-328-8597

Egyptian cases of nonviolent resistance in Egypt are available at http://bit.ly/1SLrsLX

Racialized-Gendered Partition and Dissensus in Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution

Frances S. Hasso, Associate Professor in Women’s Studies and Sociology at Duke University, will give a talk entitled:

“Racialized-Gendered Partition and Dissensus in Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution”

October 20, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.
Science Center Room 199

This paper examines the co-production and “interarticulation” of racializing/sectarian and gendering dynamics in Bahrain as longstanding conflict between the majority of citizens and the ruling Al Khalifa regime intensified into the ongoing 14 February Revolution, also called the Pearl Revolution. These dynamics are stamped on and produced through the organization of bodies and space. Embodied and spatialized dynamics are highlighted by the small geographic area of Bahrain, its residential partitions based on sect, ethnicity, and citizenship status, and its post-1979 culture of gender segregation in street life inspired by the Iranian Revolution. Among the Pearl Revolution’s notable dimensions is a rise in women-led confrontational street politics that is not necessarily authorized by Bahraini opposition men and has produced sublimated tensions not captured by images of gender-segregated orderly marches. For their part, Bahraini state officials and their supporters strategically deploy conservative ideologies of sexual respectability and purity to discredit women and men activists. Sectarian discourse, racialized naturalization and policing policies, and gendered and sexual forms of violence and control intersect in marked ways. The Pearl Revolution is a point of historical rupture, I argue, for imaginaries, subjectivities, and how gendered bodies inhabit space.

Co-sponsors: Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Modern Languages and Literature (Arabic Section) and Political Science and programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Islamic Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

The Arab Spring, Four Years Later: Hope or Despair?

The Arab Spring, Four Years Later: Hope or Despair?
Lecture by Dr. Sean Yom, Temple University

Monday, Oct. 6, 4:30 p.m., Kohlberg Scheuer Room

Four years on, the Arab Spring had generated wildly contrasting outcomes. From democratization in Tunisia to authoritarian revival in Egypt to civil war in Syria, the regional wave of popular protest has certainly washed away the foundations of the old order.

Can democratization spread to other countries without incurring the risk of war? This lecture aims to answer this question, giving a bird’s eye view of different processes and events from a political scientist’s perspective.

Sean Yom is Assistant Professor of Political Science (comparative politics). His research broadly focuses on authoritarianism and development, and he is now finishing his first book on state-building and political order in the post-colonial Middle East.

Sponsored by the Islamic Studies Program.

Welcome back and new PCS courses for Fall 2014

Opposition to Vietnam War
Welcome back to all staff, students, and faculty! We are off and running, having completed the first week of classes, and we look forward to an exciting semester.

As students will know, the first two weeks of class constitute the drop-add period during which you can change your schedule. That means there is still time for us to announce two new courses to be added to the list of courses that may be counted toward a peace and conflict studies minor. Spots remain open in the following two courses. Check them out!

First-Year Seminar: Revolution and Revolt
English ENGL 009J
Professor Lara Langer Cohen

This course investigates the literature of rebellion from the late eighteenth century’s “Age of Revolution” to the Occupy movement. By taking such a long historical view, we will explore how the revolutionary past of the Atlantic world has helped—and might still help—renegades, outcasts, and dissidents imagine its revolutionary futures. We will read the work of not only famous revolutionary leaders but also infamous and obscure ones, including radical abolitionists, communists, anarchists, feminists, student activists, and more. Throughout the class, we will ask: How do writers define revolution? How do they measure its successes and failures? How do they interpret the memory of previous uprisings and envision possibilities beyond them?

Music and War
Music MUSI 105
Professors Micaela Baranello and Barbara Milewski

For centuries, and across different cultures, music has both served war and illustrated its victories and terror. Music has also provided powerful commentary on war, articulating human pain and protest in equal measure. In this seminar we consider these functions in key works of art and popular music of the 20th century—a century of two world wars—with excursions into previous periods and our own contemporary experience with the war in Iraq. We will discuss music of war; about war; against war; and in the shadow of war.

Troubled Political Transitions: A Perspective from Egypt

Ann Mosely Lesch ’66, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, American University in Cairo, will present the 2014 Islamic Studies Annual Lecture, “Troubled Political Transitions: A Perspective from Egypt”.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

4:30 pm,

Science Center Room 199

Swarthmore College

Three years ago, Egyptians rose up to remove Hosni Mubarak’s corrupt authoritarian regime. Since then, they have been on an emotional roller-coaster, from the excitement of participating in three elections, to rising anger during the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidency, and then taking back to the streets to remove that president.

Today, they face uncertainty as to whether presidential elections will strengthen democracy or entrench the security state. Given Egypt’s centrality in the Middle East, it is important to examine and assess its troubled transition.

Egypt_freedom

Sponsored by the Islamic Studies Program, Arabic Section of Modern Languages & Literatures, Department of Political Science, and the Department of Sociology & Anthropology.