This event marks the release of The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism by renowned scholar and cultural critic Hamid Dabashi, published by Zed Books. Dr. Dabashi will read from the book and discuss recent developments on this topic in Syria and Bahrain.

The Arab Spring analyzes the causes of the Arab Spring in its many different locations, drawing on the geopolitics and history of the region and also the international context to establish how and why these revolutionary forces were able to galvanize in this way at this moment.

Pointing to a “delayed defiance” against postcolonialism, Dabashi makes a compelling case that the Arab Spring signifies no less than an end to postcolonialism in the region and the arrival of a new era in Middle Eastern history and politics. He also effectively demonstrates what this will mean for the rest of the world. The Arab Spring is the book to read to unpack the huge significance of the events that we have seen over the past year.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in the field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. He has written twenty books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles, and book reviews in major scholarly and peer-reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction, 2010). Dabashi is the series editor of “Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World” for Palgrave Macmillan and the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema.