Remaking the Middle East: The Long Arab 19th Century (Poster) (Podcast: Part 1 , Part 2)
On November 19, 2015, Dr. Seif Da’na presented the Current events stirring the Middle East which can be discerned most easily as a matter of politics, economic, or culture, but steeped in complexity they are much more. In order to explain the rise of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), the Syrian refugee question, the Palestinian Uprising, and the failure of the Arab Uprisings, this lecture reconstructed the regional history. It traced the roots of these events to the early 19th century (with emphasis on specific significant historical moments throughout since 1811 e.g, 1948 Palestinian Nakba, the late 1970s expansion of neoliberalism). Da’na argued that the existing accounts of the regional historical accounts do not explain the political present or the unfolding geopolitical regional order. As such, and in order to explain the current geopolitical conditions, identify the root causes of the current events and their possible outcomes, a reconstruction of the regional history is essential.
The lecture addressed the following interrelated topics:
The Rise of ISIL: Why ISIS?
The Syrian Refugee Question.
The Palestinian Question and Colonial Zionism.