Born in New York City, Elaine Mokhtefi has been an anti-racist and anticolonial activist since the early 1950s. She spent the years 1962-1974 in Algeria, where she worked as a journalist and a functionary in Algeria’s first post-independence government. Her deep engagement with the National Liberation Front and the Algerian provisional government led to friendships with leading anticolonial thinkers, activists and national liberation leaders throughout the developing world, including Franz Fanon and Tran Hoai Nam. She also helped facilitate travel to Algeria for U.S. civil rights and black power activist Stokely Carmichael and assisted the Black Panther Party to set up its international headquarters in Algeria. Elaine’s memoir, “Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers,” was published by Verso in 2018, and in her own translation in both France and Algeria in 2019. She is also the translator of her late husband’s memoir, J’étais Français-musulman: itinéraire d’un soldat de l’ALN, into English as I Was a French Muslim.
This panel, featuring Professors Aomar Boum and Susan Slyomovics, will address Elaine Mokhtefi's life-long activism and the legacy of her late husband, Mokhtar Mokhtefi. Panel will be moderated by Professor Ali Behdad.
Lunch will be served. RSVP required.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies