Brahim El Guabli presents Saharanism: Genealogies and Manifestations of a Desert-Focused Imaginary

Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature, Professor El Guabli is a Black, Amazigh Indigenous scholar from Morocco. In addition to teaching different levels of Arabic language courses, Professor El Guabli teaches or is interested in teaching a variety of topics in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern literature, including trauma and memory, Saharan imaginations, Jews in Arabic literature and film, transitional justice processes, translation, current events, Marxist Leninist Movements, Afro-Arab solidarities, and decolonization movements.

His research encompasses areas of language politics, indigeneity,  human rights, transitional justice, political violence, archive creation, memory studies, Amazigh/Berber literatures, and environmental humanities. Professor El Guabli’s scholarship has appeared in PMLA, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Arab Studies Journal, and the Journal of North African Studies, among others. He also authored a number of book chapters on memory, joint authorship practices in Morocco, and the return of Jews in literature and film.

He is the author of Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence and is the co-editor of a two-volume special issue of The Journal of North African Studies Journal entitled “Violence and the Politics of Aesthetics: A Postcolonial Maghreb without Borders” as well as  co-editor of Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the “Years of Lead” (Liverpool University Press, 2022) and Refiguring Loss: Jews Remembered in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Cultural Production (Pennsylvania State University, forthcoming). He most recently edited a special issue of Arab Studies Journal entitled “Where is the Maghreb?” Professor El Guabli is co-founder and co-editor of Tamazgha Studies Journal, which is an academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of Tamazgha (the broader North Africa) from the lens of indigeneity and multilingualism.

This talk is presented as part of the spring 2023 Faculty Lecture Series. The series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The Faculty Lecture Series is organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee. The aim of the series is to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries.  All lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m.  They are free and open to the public.

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