Join TARII for an online discussion with Historian Dr. Kevin Jones on his new book, “The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq”.
A recording of this lecture is available below.
The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq
Poetry has long dominated the cultural landscape of modern Iraq, simultaneously representing the literary pinnacle of high culture and giving voice to the popular discourses of mass culture. As the favored genre of culture expression for religious clerics, nationalist politicians, leftist dissidents, and avant-garde intellectuals, poetry critically shaped the social, political, and cultural debates that consumed the Iraqi public sphere in the twentieth century. The popularity of poetry in modern Iraq, however, made it a dangerous practice that carried serious political consequences and grave risks to dissident poets.
The Dangers of Poetry is the first book to narrate the social history of poetry in the modern Middle East. Moving beyond the analysis of poems as literary and intellectual texts, Kevin M. Jones shows how poems functioned as social acts that critically shaped the cultural politics of revolutionary Iraq. He narrates the history of three generations of Iraqi poets who navigated the fraught relationship between culture and politics in pursuit of their own ambitions and agendas. Through this historical analysis of thousands of poems published in newspapers, recited in popular demonstrations, and disseminated in secret whispers, this book reveals the overlooked contribution of these poets to the spirit of rebellion in modern Iraq.
Moderator: Dr. Peter Wien is President of TARII and Professor for Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland in College Park. He received his PhD in 2003 from the University of Bonn, Germany, and Master degrees from the University of Oxford, UK, and the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1999. He taught at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, and was a fellow of the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin. His publications include the books Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2017), and Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (London: Routledge, 2006).
Author: Dr. Kevin Jones is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2013 and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies in 2013-2014 before beginning his current position at the University of Georgia. His work on Iraqi cultural history and Middle Eastern labor history has appeared in Social History and his new book, The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in Iraq, was published by Stanford University Press in September 2020. The book traces the history of poetry, political protest, and public performance in modern Iraq and demonstrates the unique contribution of nationalist and communist poets to the cultural politics of anticolonialism and national liberation in the twentieth century.
Discussant: Dr. Sara Farhan is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah; and a Michael Ellis DeBakey History of Medicine Fellow at the National Library of Medicine. She earned her PhD in History from York University in 2019.
This event was co-sponsored by Stanford University Press
Interested in the book? Check out their website here.
