ISP Events

Part of the African Studies Evening Lecture Series

Lecture by Dr. Alek Baylee Toumi

ALEK BAYLEE TOUMI is a Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. A poet and playwright, he is the author of 10 books among them, Maghreb Divers, Albert Camus : Between my Mother and Injustice, and Madah-Sartre (of the trilogy of Sartre-Beauvoir return to Algeria).
Dr. Alek Toumi's lecture will review important moments in the 1954-62 France-Algeria War and trace its origins in Vichy France, the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of North and West Africans to free France from Nazi occupation and finally the Setif massacres of 1945. This historical review of the France-Algeria relations will be accompanied by a critical look at Post-colonial relations between France and North Africa since, including the problem of immigration of the 1980s, contemporary issues arising from the confusion of “Muslims vs Islamists”, the 1990s Algerian Civil War and the latest developments in the South of Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and the Sahel.