Dominant approaches to the study of African history have relegated North Africa to the margins despite its integrality as one of the key sites where the continent converges with Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean. In recent years, scholars have engaged in new approaches to North African history that offer generative and innovative insight into the study of the continent. For the winter programming of the workshop, we will focus on highlighting the work of North African scholars whose work centers on sources and voices from the region. 

Abstract: The Amazigh Cultural Movement (ACM) has produced a rich body of literature and thought that has played a crucial role in changing states and societies in North Africa. In tandem with advocacy for linguistic and cultural rights, the ACM activists remapped African geography by inventing and deploying the neologism of Tamazgha. Extending from the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the oasis of Siwa in West Egypt and encompassing vast areas of the Sahel, Tamazgha, or the Amazigh homeland, has challenged all the traditional ways in which the Sahara has been conceptualized and discussed in scholarship. This talk will address ACM activists' construction of the Amazigh homeland and reveal Tamazgha's transformative potential for scholarship.

Speaker: Brahim El Guabli, Associate Professor in Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. 

Please RSVP for the event here - Register! 

For more information about the program: 
https://history.stanford.edu/events/africa-research-workshop

If you have any questions about the Africa Research Workshop (ARW), please contact:

• Samia Errazzouki (Faculty Organizer):  samia019@stanford.edu
• Mathew Ayodele  (Graduate Student Organizer): ayodele1@stanford.edu