Avenues of Social and Political Change: Five Years of Contention in the Middle East and North Africa

Sponsored by the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Call for Papers

Five years after the eruption of mass protests across North Africa and the Middle East, citizens of these countries now live under contrasting conditions. Yet despite the zigzagging trajectory that these uprisings have thus far treaded, new channels and imaginings of social, political and economic change have opened up over the past five years. 

This conference will explore current possibilities that have been opened up through and in the aftermath of the grassroots uprisings that have swept through the region since 2011 and the sustained struggles for these arenas as well as the counter-efforts that have attempted to constrain and constrict them. 

Graduate students  are  invited  to  submit  proposals (250-400 words) to  present working projects or completed research papers on the following themes:  (De)democratization and the limits of authoritarianism; prospects for electoral politics; re-imagining public space; the role of labor strikes and worker unions; political economy; collective memory/amnesia and the production of historical narratives; gender politics; activism and political subjectivities; Islamists and conceptions of the secular/religious,  resurgence of nationalism; state power and representations.

Paper abstracts and inquiries about the conference are to be sent to: ascmenaconference@gmail.com. The application deadline is February 5, 2016.