Alissa Walter | Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Join us for a book talk and conversation with Professor Alissa Walter, author of Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad.

Professor Alexander Key, moderator
Dr. Helen Malko and Haider Hadi, discussants

Contested City offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war, from the oil boom of the 1950s through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Interactions between citizens and their rulers shaped the social fabric and political realities of the city. Notably, low-ranking Ba'th party officials functioned as crucial intermediaries, deciding how regime policies would be applied. Charting the social, economic, and political transformations of Iraq's capital city, Professor Walter examines how national policies translated into action at the local, everyday level.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity; Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; Hoover Institution Library and Archives; Middle Eastern Studies Forum, and the Stanford Humanities Center

 

Alissa Walter

About the Author

Alissa Walter is an associate professor of history at Seattle Pacific University. She earned her MA in Arab Studies and her PhD in Middle Eastern History from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She traveled frequently to Iraq for her research, and has spent significant time in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Walter regularly volunteers as an expert witness for Iraqi asylum seekers in Washington.