Hybrid event: open in person to the NYU community, open online to the public.
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM: VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE - FRANCE AND (NORTH-)AFRICA. MEMORY AND HISTORY IN THE MACRON ERA
Attendance on Zoom only--fill out virtual registration form below
Register here for virtual attendance
NOTE: After registering to attend virtually, you will receive an email 24 hours before the event with a link to watch the documentary film "Restitution?" by Nora Philippe. The link will expire after 72 hours.
With Noureddine Amara (Yale) and Malika Rahal (CNRS). Moderated by Elisabeth Fink (New York University).
Our conversation will examine how the memory of colonialism has taken on a newfound political urgency. We will focus in particular on two reports solicited by the French government, one written by historian Benjamin Stora on the memory of French colonization and the Algerian war and the other by historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe on Franco-African relations. The conversation will also discuss reactions they have elicited in Africa, including the scathing repudiation of the Stora report from the Algerian state.
Noureddine Amara is a historian and a research fellow at the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School. His book manuscript is entitled “The Making of France in Algeria: Algerian Emigration, Misuse of the Name and Nationality Conflicts in the World (1830-to the 1930s).” He also works on a collaborative project on postcolonial legacies in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Malika Rahal is a historian of Algeria. She is the director of the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (IHTP), a CNRS research center in Paris, and currently a visiting professor at NYU’s Institute of French Studies. Her two first books dealt with the colonial history of Algeria. The first is a biography of activist Ali Boumendjel (1919-1957) who was kidnapped and assassinated by French paratroopers during the “battle of Algiers.” The second is a study of one of the two main Algerian nationalist political parties of the 1940s and 1950s, Ferhat Abbas’ Union Démocratique du Manifeste algérien. Her most recent book, which just came out with La Découverte, Algérie 1962, is a popular history of the year 1962 in Algeria, as the country experienced the end of an eight-year long war for Independence, the end of a 132-year long colonization by France, and the birth of a modern state. Malika Rahal blogs (in French, English and Arabic) at http://texturesdutemps.hypotheses.org/.
4:00 PM - 6:15 PM: FILM SCREENING FOLLOWED BY CONVERSATION BETWEEN FILMMAKER NORA PHILIPPE AND FRÉDÉRIC VIGUIER (NYU)
In-person attendance open only to NYU community--fill out the in-person registration form below; Zoom attendees register through virtual form below.
Register here for virtual attendance
NOTE: After registering to attend virtually, you will receive an email 24 hours before the event with a link to watch the documentary film "Restitution?" by Nora Philippe. The link will expire after 72 hours.
Register here for in-person attendance
NOTE: In-person attendance at La Maison Française is limited to current members of the NYU community (students, faculty, staff). You must provide your NYU NetID upon registration and present your Daily Screener pass upon entry.
Restitution? A documentary film by Nora Philippe, 2021, 83 min. In French with English Subtitles
This film narrates the story of over a century of colonial pillage and appropriation of African works of art by Europe, the relentless struggle from Africa to recover them, and the great museums that celebrate the classic African arts, yet hoard their treasures.
Nora Philippe is a filmmaker, curator, and writer. She directed Like Dolls, I’ll Rise (2018), a short documentary dedicated to Black Dolls crafted by African-American women, which was selected in over thirty festivals in fifteen countries. Her new TV documentary, Restitution?, was broadcast on ARTE in 2021, and on Al-Jazeera (world), Black Public Media, New Zealand Sky, RTVE (Spain), RTS (Switzerland), SVT (Sweden), and TV5Monde.
Event co-sponsored by NYU’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora and Columbia Maison Française.
