Jonathan Wyrtzen
Contact Information
Yale University
Downloads
- Vita : download PDF
Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs
Jonathan Wyrtzen (Ph.D. Georgetown, 2009) is a comparative-historical sociologist with teaching and research interests in North African society and politics. He works on the areas of state formation; colonialism and empire; ethnicity and nationalism; urban and rural contentious politics; and Islamic social movements. He is completing a book manuscript titled, Making Morocco: Colonial State-Building and the Struggle to Define the Nation , that examines the relationships among European imperial expansion, colonial policies of modernization and state formation, and the rise of Arabo-Islamic nationalism in North Africa in the mid-20th century. This study also explores the central roles of three marginal groups – Imazighen (Berbers), Jews, and women - in defining Moroccan identity during the mobilization of anti-colonial nationalism. He is beginning another project comparing tribal insurgency movements against colonial states in the 1920s in North Africa and the Middle East.
Recent Publications
Articles
- Wyrtzen, Jonathan. (Forthcoming). “Performing the Nation in Anti-Colonial Protest in Interwar Morocco,” Nations and Nationalism.
- Guhin, Jeffrey, and Jonathan Wyrtzen. 2013. “The Violences of Knowledge: Edward Said, Sociology, and Post-Orientalist Reflexivity.” Political Power and Social Theory 24:231-262.
- Wyrtzen, Jonathan (2011). “Colonial State-Building and the Negotiation of Arab and Berber Identity in Protectorate Morocco,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43, pp. 227-249.
Book Chapters, Reviews, and Other
- (2013) “National resistance, amazighité, and (re-)imagining the nation in Morocco.” In Driss Maghraoui (Ed.), Revisiting the colonial past in Morocco (pp. 184-99). New York: Routledge
- (2011) Reflections from Morocco on the Arab Spring, Trajectories, Spring 2011, Vol. 22, No.2. Download Article >>
- (2010) Review of The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance, 1912-1956 by Spencer Segalla The Journal of Modern History, 84 (4): 956-58.
Working Papers
- Wyrtzen, Jonathan. “Seeing and (Being Seen) Like a Colonial State: Legibility and Legitimacy in French North Africa.”
Courses and Seminars
Undergraduate
- SOCY 135, Islamic Societies, Culture, and Politics
- SOCY S135, Society and Politics of North Africa (Taught in Morocco)
- SOCY 232, Islamic Social Movements
- SOCY 339b, Imperialism, Insurgency, and State Building in the Middle East
- SOCY 372a, Comparative Nationalism in North Africa and the Middle East
Graduate
Undergraduate/Graduate
- AFST 401/501 Research Methods in African Studies
Affiliations
Yale
- Council on Middle East Studies
- Council on African Studies
- Center for Comparative Research
- Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
- Transitions to Modernity Colloquium
National & International
- American Sociological Association (ASA)
- Middle East Studies Association
- American Institute for Maghrib Studies
- American Historical Association