Maghrib in Past & Present | Podcasts themaghribpodcast.com

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’émigration, l’emploi et les chantiers de solidarité entre 1962 et 1964. 
En effet, à la sortie de l’été 1962, les promesses des dirigeants, des chefs des wilayas et les demandes de protection sociale formulées par les populations deviennent un ressort fondamental de légitimation et de mise en action de l’État algérien. Il s’agit d’examiner ici comment l’application du programme d’égalité et de justice sociale du FLN a été contraint par les oppositions politiques et les mouvements sociaux de l’indépendance. La première partie traite de l’énonciation de l’emploi et de l’émigration vers la France en tant que problèmes publics. Elle décrit le nouveau pacte social révolutionnaire, formulé en 1962, qui engage moralement les dirigeants. La seconde partie traite des émeutes et mouvements sociaux locaux relativement peu étudiés par la littérature, survenus les premières années de l’indépendance. Elle montre que la subsistance et un sens de la justice sociale sont à leur origine et jouent un rôle central dans la formation d’un Etat social algérien nourricier.


Cet épisode a été enregistré le 11 octobre 2023  par le Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Dr. Amar Mohand Amar, historien et chercheur au CRASC, a présidé cette rencontre et a modéré le débat.


Nous remercions notre ami Ignacio Villalón, étudiant en master à l’EHESS, pour sa prestation à la guitare du titre A vava Inouva de Idir pour l’introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Réalisation et montage: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA).

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 in the various artistic manifestations and platforms, catalyzed by the Casablanca Art School (M. Melehi, F. Belkahia, M. Chabâa, M. Hamidi, M. Ataallah, M. Agueznay, M. Labied, H. Miloudi, F. Bellamine, Chaïbia...). Their multifaceted geometric abstraction itself working as a platform drawing a much bigger territory of action: critical journals and magazines, interior and graphic design, collecting and studying Afro-Berber popular arts, mural painting, street exhibitions… Eventually the CAS proves to be not only one of the most important postcolonial art schools of the Global South but also a social interface, for rethinking public space (through the arts) in Morocco. The exhibition referred to is curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet for Zamân Books & Curating.



Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator « Middle East and North Africa », he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating to explore Arab, African and Asian modernities. He published numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al-Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, Behjat Sadr, etc. and curated among other projects Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, The Mosaic Rooms, London/MACCAL, Marrakech/Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020 ; Douglas Abdell : Reconstructed Traphouse, Cromwell Space, Londres, 2021 ; Monaco-Alexandria. The Great Detour. World-Capitals and Cosmopolitan Surrealism, Nouveau Musée National, Monaco, 2021-2022.    

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 19th of June, 2023 by the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

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 describes how concepts of modernity, authenticity, and race shaped musicology and musical practice across Maghrebi societies and considers the extent to which these concepts still hold sway today.

Liz Matsushita is a historian of modern North Africa and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She previously taught at Claremont McKenna College and earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. Her research examines the history of music and musicology in colonial and post-colonial Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and the ways in which music served as a political idiom that shaped French and Maghrebi understandings of race and power.

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 10th of May, 2023 by the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Posted by Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

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 restructuration économique induite, la société algérienne va dès le XIXèmesiècle se retrouver largement arrimée au capitalisme désormais étendu à l’échelle mondiale, avec cependant ses spécificités dans le Sud de la planète cantonné dans le statut de périphérie. Le local et l’universel s’entremêlaient donc largement au sein d’une formation sociale à caractéristiques d’économie agraire, mais que la contrainte armée et les lois foncières et autres imposées par la puissance dominatrice poussaient de plus en plus vers la forme coloniale de production et d’exportation et au détriment de l’agriculture vivrière plus tournée vers les besoins de la population locale.

La première moitié du XXème siècle sera caractérisée par un coup d’accélérateur donné à ce processus global qui paradoxalement débouchera sur l’émergence du Mouvement national puis la proclamation de l’État national en 1962 et les deux Guerres mondiales y auront contribué de façon toute particulière.

Cet épisode a été enregistré le 30 mars 2023 et s’inscrit dans le cadre des Conférences Ramadanesques organisées par l’IDRH et le Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Dr. Manssour Kedidir, politologue, a présidé cette rencontre et a modéré le débat.

Nous remercions Dr. Jonathan Glasser, anthropologue culturel au College of William & Mary, pour son istikhbar in sika à l’alto pour l’introduction et la conclusion de ce podcast.

Réalisation et montage: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA).

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 University Press in May 2023. In the discussion, Calderwood gives an overview of the book’s main ideas and structure and describes the inspiration behind the book’s title. As Calderwood explains, the question that drives his book is: What does al-Andalus do? That is, how has the memory of al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) shaped cultural and political debates around the world? In this conversation, Calderwood places particular emphasis on the role that al-Andalus has played in debates about ethnicity, race, gender, and nation in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. He asks, for example, why did the Spanish rapper Khaled assert, “Al-Andalus is my race”? Or why did the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish call Palestine “the Andalus of the possible”? What, in short, has thinking about al-Andalus made possible for writers, artists, and their audiences in the Mediterranean region and beyond? Pursuing these questions, Calderwood surveys some of the case studies from his book and explains their relevance to scholars and readers in the fields of North African and Mediterranean studies. At the end of the conversation, Calderwood briefly discusses a new research project on the history of multilingual art forms in the Mediterranean region.

Eric Calderwood is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of History, the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the Program in Medieval Studies, the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the European Union Center, and the Center for African Studies. His first book, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2018. It has been translated into Spanish and Arabic and has won several awards, including the 2019 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies. His second book, On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2023. He has also published articles in PMLA, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Journal of North African Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, and International Journal of Middle East Studies. In addition, he has contributed to public-facing venues like Foreign Policy, McSweeney’s, The American Scholar, NPR, and the BBC.

This episode was recorded on July 14th, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).

Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director, TALIM.

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Episode 169: Engendering Inclusive Politics: Gender Quotas in Morocco’s Legislatures

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 communal councils have affected women’s substantive representation (i.e., the representation of their policy preferences and priorities). She has worked with Professor Hanane Darhour at Université Ibn Zohr and the National Democratic Institute to investigate whether gender quotas can empower women as visible citizens whose interests are included in their communities’ legislative agendas.

Delana Sobhani received her BS in International Political Economy from Georgetown University in 2018. After working as a data analyst for two years, she pursued a Fulbright grant to study the nuanced impacts of gender quotas. Delana has worked with the Ibn Zohr University in Agadir and the National Democratic Institute in Rabat to examine the effects of reserved seats in Moroccan legislatures on women’s representation.

This episode was recorded on June 11, 2021 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 


Recorded and edited in Tangier, by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Coordinator, TALIM.

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).