Maghrib in Past & Present | Podcasts
Education
Episode 170: The Many Lives of al-Andalus: A Conversation with Eric Calderwood
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).
Entretien avec Dr. Khadija Mohsen-Finan sur son dernier livre : Les Dissidents du Maghreb depuis les Independences
Le trauma colonial: enquête sur les effets de l’oppression coloniale en Algérie
Power and Ridicule: Political Mockery and Subversion in the Middle East and North Africa
Interview avec Pr. Mohammed Kerrou sur son dernier livre : L’Autre Révolution
L’architecture de la contre-révolution : l’armée française dans le nord de l’Algérie
Moroccan and Ottoman Contributions to 18th c. Diplomatic Developments
Anthropologie, généralisation et identité culturelle
Les enjeux politiques du 11 décembre 1960
The Mad-For-Maghreb Generation : The Maghreb In the Pan-African Cultural Project
GPRA, un mandat historique (1958-1962)
The History of Pan-Africanism in the Postcolonial Period: The Pan-African Festival of Algiers of 1969 (PANAF)
Rencontre avec Pr. Mohamed Mebtoul autour de son dernier ouvrage: Algérie, la citoyenneté impossible?
Why William Wordsworth is needed today
Rencontre avec Bouziane Ben Achour autour du théâtre algérien d'aujourd'hui
Muhammad I al-Mustansir of Tunis and the Northern Mediterranean
La résilience architecturale en Mauritanie
Le patrimoine en question : Entre métissages et territoires linguistiques
La science-fiction et la littérature algérienne: Discussion entre Kamel Daoud et l'auteur Riadh Hadir autour de son dernier roman, « Pupille »
Gunpowder Women: A Generation Galloping Past the Mudawana
La sociolinguistique de l'écrit dans le Trans-Sahara
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall
The No-Frills Teacher Podcast
Heal, Survive & Thrive!
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast