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From the beginning of the Second World War through the period of the first successful anti-colonial struggles and the project of political unity, and extending through the eras of the 1967 setback and the civil war in Lebanon, secular Arab thought was shaped by two underlying and opposing moods: one utopian, and the other dystopic. At the same time, in the seemingly forgotten provinces of religious thought, the “rise and fall” of Arab modernism inspired equally passionate ideas about an alternative vision for organizing society. Due to the centrality of the study of nationalism on the one hand and of Islamic radicalism on the other, this rich and complex period has been subjected to a reductionist treatment. Conceived very broadly, possible paper topics may be:
1. Apologetic and accommodationist religious thought under Nasserisim
2. Marxist, socialist and communist intellectual rivalry
3. Literature, commitment (iltizam) and resistance
4. Third-worldism and the Arab thinker
5. Intellectuals and the state
6. Intellectual competition and collaboration between capitals of Arab thought (Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad)
7. Prison thought
8. The emergence of a new political language
9. Old guard versus young guard in secular Arab thought
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