The Maghrib Workshop: Sovereignty, Crisis, and Narratives of Belonging


Juan Camilo Gomez-Rivas
Literature
UC Santa Cruz

This project explores the history of sovereignty in North Africa, its relationship to people’s notions of belonging, and the way these change in times of crisis. Persistent questions for the colonial and postcolonial transformations, they are equally significant for the long pre-modern period. And while the evolution of sovereignty has long been of interest to historical and political studies, the narrative component is meant to encourage interdisciplinarity and invite scholars to explore the cultural production of the Maghrib and its diasporas and its engagement with contested identities and their narratives (itself a deeply political issue). This thematic framework brings together 14 faculty members and 3 graduate student scholars of the Maghrib from across the University of California (and beyond).