Gender and Politics in the Arab Spring
6 hour course by Monica Marks, NYU Abu Dhabi
- Schedule: 30 June (14:30-16:30), 2 July (15:30-17:30) & 4 July (11:30-13:30)
- Venue: Blanquerna
This seminar-style course interrogates the role of feminism, masculinity & LGBTQ issues in relation to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and their political aftermath. How did these movements compete or overlap with the state, counter-revolutionary dynamics, Islamist political parties and jihadist groups? To what extent was the political interplay between these forces new or unprecedented in the Arab world, versus presaged by pre-existing dynamics? Through intensive discussion of readings, videos and podcasts, this course helps students answer these questions. It explores gender as a window into the politics of Arab Spring countries, like Tunisia and Egypt; countries whose governments immediately quelled Arab Spring uprisings; and countries whose regimes proved resilient against any uprisings. Note: Everyone is welcome to take this course. All perspectives are welcomed provided they are expressed respectfully and grounded in thoroughly preparing the assigned materials. Men are encouraged to enrol.
Monica Marks
Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies, NYU Abu Dhabi
Monica Marks is a scholar of Islamist movements, gender, and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Her research focuses on broad topics across the region and beyond, but especially in regards to the tensions between pluralism and state power in the two countries where she's lived longest: Tunisia and Turkey. Prior to joining NYUAD, Dr. Marks was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She completed her PhD, an ethnographic study of post-2011 Tunisian politics based on over 1,200 in-country interviews, in 2018 at St Antony's College, Oxford.
A first-generation college student from rural Kentucky, Dr. Marks studied in Tanzania, Tunisia, and Jordan, and in Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar, before completing her Masters and PhD at Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. During her graduate studies, Dr. Marks was based primarily in Tunisia (2011-2016) and Turkey (2016-2018), where she published academic work and more public-facing analysis for leading North American and European think tanks, along with publications like Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, for which she also freelanced briefly as a journalist. Dr. Marks is passionate about mentoring students, facilitating creative fieldwork in and beyond the MENA region, and bringing academic research into greater conversation with journalism, policy-related analysis, and public-facing conversation.