Speaker: miriam cooke, Braxton Craven Professor of Arab Cultures, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University. Her writings have focused on the intersection of gender and war in modern Arabic literature and on Arab women writers’ constructions of Islamic feminism. Her more recent interests have turned to Arab cultural studies with a concentration on Syria, and to the networked connections among Arabs and Muslims around the world.

This presentation will cover the trajectory of Syrian cultural production from 2011 until 2016. Through plastic and digital art, videos and films, novels and poetry/ song, Syrian artist-activists are insisting that what began as a revolution must be acknowledged as such. They are prepared to pay the price with their freedom or their lives to insist that the demand for freedom persists in the current mayhem.