Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia: Literature, the Arts, and Cinema since Independence

FAIN: EH-50361-13

Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR 97331-8655)
Joseph Krause (Project Director: March 2013 to March 2015)

A three-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty to study the literature, cinema, and other artistic production of post-colonial Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

This proposal builds on a 2007 NEH Institute devoted to Berber North Africa. Its purpose is to initiate college and university teachers to the transformative periods that have marked Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia since decolonization. The institute intends to present the Maghreb's transformative periods from the perspective of writers, painters, filmmakers and other artists. It will be organized around three themes uniting politics and the arts since the 1960s: Nationalism, Exile and Revival. Three themes corresponding in overlapping ways to three periods: the post-independence and cold war years (1960-1990); the years marked by the political and economic instability of globalization (1990-2010); and the recent changes since the Arab Spring. Bringing together six visiting scholars, the objective of the institute is to explain the relation between these themes and periods through the works of established and recent artists who have contributed to social changes in North Africa.