CMES Seminar: Everyday Nuclear Histories and Futures in the Middle East, 1945–1948

Abstract

This seminar examines nuclear imaginaries in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. It situates people from the Arab world into nuclear thought, looking at how the atomic age rapidly became part of everyday lives. Embracing the idea that reality and fiction are not only deeply intertwined but also co-constitutive, it analyses everyday engagements with the nuclear condition in the aftermath of the bombing of Japan, across a wide range of sources. The seminar argues that these semi-fictional historical sources—memoirs, pseudo-scientific predictions, speculative reports published in newspapers, popular science books and even rumours—capture an affective moment at the beginning of the atomic age, which was marked by hysteria, widespread speculation and exaggeration. Discussions on nuclear weapons, precisely because the extent of their destruction seems unimaginable, blur the boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’, offering a unique opportunity to reflect on stories of world politics and on the tensions within historical International Relations.

Hebatalla Taha is an Associate Senior Lecturer at Lund University's Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science. Her work lies at the intersection of political economy and security in the modern Middle East, particularly Israel/Palestine. Her doctoral work analyzes the role of Palestinians in Israeli capitalism, focusing on everyday encounters and non-conventional sites of contestation, such as high-tech firms and shopping centers. More recently, she is researching nuclear histories and technologies in the Middle East, which has been published in Third World Quarterly, International Affairs, and Global Affairs. She is also an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, where she collaborates with the Nuclear Knowledges research collective.

The talk is held at CMES, Finngatan 16 in Lund. If you are not able to attend in-person, there is an option to attend via Zoom. Please register here for Zoom attendance: https://lu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5IpcOusqDIoH9cXODGRyju2jBYmSEGdZ03d

This event is part of the CMES seminar series spring 2024. For more information, visit the CMES website.