Maghrib in Past & Present | Podcasts

Episode 187: Artist talk with Nassim Azarzar on “All Things Flow” (2023), “Bonne Route” (2018-present), and other projects Nassim Azarzar is an artist and graphic designer researching visual and popular imaginaries in Morocco by exploring their different forms, occurrences, and representation tools. In 2023, Azarzar took part in the project School of Casablanca, initiated by the KW Institute for C...

Episode 186: Old Marvels, New Approaches: The Revitalization of Balāgha in Moroccan Literary Studies The science of balāgha is an Arabic scholarly discipline dealing with poetics and rhetoric, one that dates back to at least the 10th century C.E. Scholars of balāgha have long studied how poets convey intellectual and emotional content to listeners by using tools such as vivid imagery, sound play,...

Episode 185: Agricultural Modernization in the MENA Region The agrarian and food crisis in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have re-emerged vigorously to the attention of global development agencies and governments in coincidence with the Russia-Ukraine war. The food crisis has  been interpreted through a number of tropes, including Malthusian, environmentally determinist, security and deve...

Episode 184: Activating Ruins and Performing Power in Colonial Carthage In the decades leading up to, and during, the French Protectorate (1881–1956), the excavation of ruins became a critical component of a colonialist modernizing practice that saw North Africa’s ancient imperial and early Christian pasts as tangible justification for European dominance. Sites were not only unearthed, but their r...

Episode 183: Être étranger dans l'Algérie indépendante, 1962-1979   Dans ce podcast, Laura Orban, doctorante en histoire, évoque la question de l’expérience d’extranéité en Algérie de 1962 à la fin des années 1970. À l’Indépendance, tandis qu’une majorité des Français d’Algérie quitte leur terre natale ou de vie pour la métropole, d’autres choisissent de rester. Ils sont rejoints des semaines, des...

Episode 182: Le cinéma Tunisien post-révolutionnaire : une vue d’ensemble, un regard intérieur Dans ce podcast, Chiraz Latiri, ancienne Ministre des Affaires Culturelles en Tunisie, directrice du Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image (CNCI) entre 2017 et 2019, et professeure-chercheure en Informatique à l’ Université de la Manouba , fait le bilan de l’évolution de l’industrie du cinéma Tunisien...

Episode 181: Entretien avec le sociologue ruraliste Mohamed Mehdi Le projet « Archives d’histoire orale de la production intellectuelle maghrébine » vise à documenter les trajectoires de vie, les formations intellectuelles et les luttes politiques de plusieurs générations de femmes et d'hommes nord-africains qui ont contribué à la création de la culture écrite et parlée dans cette partie du monde....

Episode 180: A Short History of the Tunisian Film Industry One of the earliest decisions of the new Tunisian government after Independence was to create the Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs and Information and with it, allot a budget for cinema. The meaning of “cinema” as both art and industry has morphed and been subject for debate continuously since then, especially as it constituted a mo...

Episode 179: Aux origines du MALG. Témoignage d’un compagnon de Boussouf   Rares sont les « Malgaches », les membres du fameux MALG (Ministère de l’Armement et des Liaisons générales) créé en 1960 par Abdelhafid Boussouf, qui ont livré leur témoignage écrit. Abderrahmane Berrouane, dit Saphar, est de ceux-là. Il lui aura sans doute fallu un certain courage pour oser écrire à la première personne e...

Episode 178: Les évolutions post-2011 du cinéma tunisien En 2023, le Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis a lancé une recherche sur le cinéma tunisien contemporain en tant qu’art et industrie. Prenant en compte la création d’un cinéma d’Etat après l’indépendance ainsi que des impacts de la révolution de 2011, ce projet a analysé des des acteurs/actrices et des institutions, des tendances thématique...

Episode 177: Rencontre avec Abdelkrim Elaidi autour de son ouvrage: Étudiants volontaires et paysans. Algérie 1970 Dans le présent ouvrage, c’est avec la rigueur du sociologue spécialiste du monde rural que Abdelkrim Elaidi revient sur des expériences qu'il a connues - parfois de près - pour nous proposer une solide étude qui nous place au cœur de la « Révolution agraire », lancée en 1971 en Algér...

Episode 176: Maroc: Une économie sous plafond de verre La crise de l’eau au Maroc a pour origine certes des contraintes géo-climatiques, mais aussi, et peut-être surtout des choix de politique agricole et de politique de l’eau, qui ont généré des modèles de production et de consommation peu compatibles avec les réalités hydriques du pays. Pour faire face aux défis présents et à venir, il s’agit de...

After Tunisian independence in 1956, librarians confronted new questions about national culture, cultural development, and ongoing cultural decolonization after political independence. The Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie took on new missions in national bibliography and in the cataloguing of Tunisian and African publications; librarians organized their profession and struggled over its leadershi...

Episode 174: L'édification de l'état social algérien à l'indépendance : Émigration et emploi (1962-1964)   Dans ce podcast, Baptiste Mollard, doctorant en sciences politiques au Centre de Recherches Sociologiques sur le Droit et les Institutions Pénales (CESDIP), Paris-Saclay, intervient sur le sujet de l’édification de l’État social algérien à l’indépendance et plus particulièrement sur l’émigrat...

Episode 173: The Casablanca Art School, Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde This podcast about the Casablanca Art School’s development in the postcolonial era of 1960-1970s, Morocco, was recorded during the time of the exhibition at Tate St-Ives, 27 May 2023-14 January 2024. It brings together for the first time a selection of 21 artists-activists who significantly participated i...

Episode 172: The Politics of Music(ology) in the Maghrib In this episode, historian Liz Matsushita discusses the ideas, institutions, and technologies that informed the study and categorization of different North African music genres during the colonial and independence periods. What would have been considered music? Who was interested in studying North African musical genres and why? Matsushita d...

Episode 171: Les deux guerres mondiales et l'Algérie  Dans ce podcast, Pr. Hassan Remaoun, sociologue et historien, Professeur retraité de l’Université d’Oran 2 et chercheur associé au CRASC , intervient sur les rapports entretenus entre le local et l’universel à travers une communication intitulée « Les deux Guerres mondiales et l'Algérie ». Par le biais de la colonisation, au travers de la restr...

Episode 170: The Many Lives of al-Andalus: A Conversation with Eric Calderwood In this episode, Eric Calderwood , an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Illinois, joins Jen Rasamimanana , the director of the Tangier Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, for a discussion of his new book, On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus , published by Harvard Univ...

Episode 169: Women in the Moroccan Parliament In response to the February 20 movement, the Moroccan government passed electoral laws that institutionalized and expanded gender quotas at the national and local levels, enabling women to win an unprecedented number of seats in the 2015 and 2016 elections. In this podcast, Delana Sobhani examines how reserved seats in the House of Representatives and...

Episode 168: Les politiques publiques de modernisation agricole au Maghreb : enjeux et défis pour le futur  La crise alimentaire (2007-2008), suivie de la crise sanitaire de 2020-21 et plus récemment de la crise ukrainienne (2022) a révélé, d’une part, la vulnérabilité alimentaire des pays du Maghreb, et d’autre part, l’incapacité des politiques publiques agricoles mises en œuvre à résoudre les qu...

Episode 167: Seeing the Words of Poets: Muḥammad Bennīs and the Visual in Moroccan Poetry Frustrated by the fragmented scene of modern Morocco poetry, Moroccan poet and critic Muḥammad Bennīs pens the Bayān al-Kitāba in 1981 (“Manifesto of Writing”). The manifesto, which was published in Al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, a journal Bennīs co-founded in 1974, set forth a new concept of writing steeped in Morocc...

Episode 166: Performing Place-based Knowledge: The Case of Aouche This podcast offers a contextual analysis of the exhibition histories and critical reception of the Algerian artist collective Aouchem. It will focus on the historical and political context that shaped Aouchem's work and how their democratizing ethos and aesthetic sensibility, rooted in Indigenous visual forms, influenced the decolo...

Episode 165: Narrative Subversions: “Unnatural” Narration and an Ethics of Engagement in the Work of Mahi Binebine   In this podcast,  Doyle Calhoun presents a work related to his first book project,  The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire —which concludes with a chapter on suicide bombing, focused on Moroccan writer and artist Mahi Binebine ’s (b. 1959) novel Les Éto...

Episode 164: Amazigh Sisterhood in Poetry and Songs During the Algerian War In this podcast, Fazia Aitel , Associate professor of Francophone and African Studies, Claremont McKenna College in California provides an overview of an ongoing work on Amazigh women from Kabylia, Algeria. Her initial interest was to assess the way women managed while being principally targeted by the French propaganda ma...

Episode 163: Watermelons, Dates, and Drought in Zagora Southeast Morocco is known for its oases, dates, and diverse linguistic and cultural landscape shaped by Amazigh, Arab, African, Jewish, nomadic and agrarian exchanges. Today, this landscape is also frequently colored by watermelons and water shortages. Small-scale farmers are at the center of the changes—navigating water scarcity and market f...