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In his talk Dr. Arnaud Kurze maps the the role of art and the impact of social movements to address human rights abuses in the aftermath of autocratic regime change. His research draws on in-depth interviews with Tunisian youth activist leaders focusing on their performance-based campaigns.

Based on Foucauldian concepts of heterotopia, he fuels new insights on the challenges associated with generating spaces of memory and accountability. In his findings, Dr. Kurze demonstrates that the emergence of this new fragile spatiality is nevertheless contingent on contested visions and memories of Tunisia’s secularist and Islamist political traditions.

Bio
Arnaud Kurze is Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. His scholarly work on transitional justice in the post-Arab Spring world focuses particularly on youth activism, art and collective memory. From 2016-2018, Dr. Kurze was appointed a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, studying youth resilience in North Africa and the Middle East. He is the co-editor of New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art & Memory published by Indiana University Press.