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In Search of 'La Chose Franco-Arab'

From the eighteenth century until the present, the multitude of French-Arab relationships, positive or negative, constitute what one can call, according to the famous expression of Jacques Berque, "la chose franco-arabe" ("the French-Arab thing"). This seminar will define its history and consequently its nature—and what its future might be.

Date & Time

Monday
Feb. 28, 2011
3:00pm – 4:30pm ET

Overview

From the eighteenth century until the present, the multitude of French-Arab relationships, positive or negative, constitute what one can call, according to the famous expression of Jacques Berque, "la chose franco-arabe" ("the French-Arab thing"). This seminar will define its history and consequently its nature—and what its future might be.

Henry Laurens is a professor and chair of history of the contemporary Arab world at the Collège de France, Paris. Laurens is one of France's foremost experts on the Middle East specializing in several related areas of research: European-Ottoman contacts in the 19th century, Franco-Arab relations, Middle-Eastern politics, European thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the history of modern Palestine, about which he has written a three-volume work covering the period from 1799 to the present day.

Since 1999, Laurens has served on the Administrative Council of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo, is a member of the High Council of the Institute of the Arab World (IMA) in Paris, and serves on the editorial board of the journal Maghreb-Machrek.

Laurens has published more than twenty books on the history of the Middle East, imperialism, terrorism, and the Mediterranean including La Question de Palestine, volumes 1 and 2; L'accomplissement des prophéties, and L'empire et ses ennemis. In 2004, Laurens was the recipient of the Joseph du Theil prize of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

Laurens earned his degree and doctorate, specializing in Arabic literature, at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris and at the Sorbonne–Paris IV.

 

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Speaker

Henry Laurens

Professor and Chair of History of the Contemporary Arab World, Collège de France, Paris
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Hosted By

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

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