Revolutions aesthetic: A cultural history of Ba'thist Syria

Guest lecture by Max Weiss, Assoc. professor of history and associate faculty in comparative literature, Princeton University.

Revolutions Aesthetic (Stanford, 2022) reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.

Come and engage with Max Weiss as he presents and discusses his recent book.