Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

by Alex Lubin

In this absorbing transnational history, Alex Lubin reveals the vital connections between African American political thought and the people and nations of the Middle East. Spanning the 1850s through the present, and set against a backdrop of major political and cultural shifts around the world, the book demonstrates how international geopolitics, including the ascendance of liberal internationalism, established the conditions within which blacks imagined their freedom and, conversely, the ways in which various Middle Eastern groups have understood and used the African American freedom struggle to shape their own political movements.
Lubin extends the framework of the black freedom struggle beyond the familiar geographies of the Atlantic world and sheds new light on the linked political, social, and intellectual imaginings of African Americans, Palestinians, Arabs, and Israeli Jews. This history of intellectual exchange, Lubin argues, has forged political connections that extend beyond national and racial boundaries.

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, Islam, Middle East, Race, Academic

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Alex Lubin is Professor of African American Studies at Penn State University, where he studies the transnational history of the African Diaspora in the Middle East/North Africa. He is the author of Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary.

Reviews

[Kaiti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't feel qualified enough to comment on the contents of the book. It's very dense and hard to follow at times, but also very interesting. There were a lot of editing issues though, lots of typos and misplaced or missing commas, etc.