Events and What's On

RSE Free Public Lecture - The Arab Spring: Tropes and Discourses

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Professor Yasir Suleiman CBE FRSE, Professor of Modern Arabic Studies, University of Cambridge

How did the official media in Egypt, Libya and Syria discuss the Arab Spring? What tropes of national identity did these media use to describe and explain the popular uprisings in these countries?

What do these descriptions and tropes tell us about the structure of the Arab political scene? Will Islamist movements gain political ascendency in the post-revolutionary Arab order? What lessons can be learnt from the Arab Spring in the way we discuss and debate the Middle East?

This lecture will deal with these issues by examining ways of media representation, inter-Arab political rivalries and the Islamist phobia regionally and in Western circles.