Aomar Boum
Aomar Boum
Professor, Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies
Office: 316B Haines Hall
Email: aboum@anthro.ucla.edu
Biography
I am a socio-cultural anthropologist with a historical bent concerned with the social and cultural representation of and political discourse about religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and North Africa.
My ethnographic work engages the place of religious and ethnic minorities such as Jews, Baha’is, Shias and Christians in post-independence Middle Eastern and North African states.
My multi-disciplinary background and academic experience are at the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African studies, Islamic studies, Religious studies, African studies and Jewish studies.
Much of my work has focused on the anthropology and history of Jewish-Muslim relations from the 19th century to the present. I have also written on different topics such as Moroccan Jewish historiography, Islamic archives and manuscripts, education, music, youth, Holocaust, anti-Semitism, migration, and sports among other things.
Research Interests
Ethnic and religious minorities; Islam; anthropology of religion, history, youth, and festival; Holocaust; sociology of Morocco; historiography; Morocco; North Africa; sub-Saharan Africa; Middle East
Publications
Books
2018 The Holocaust and North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press. [co-editor Sarah A. Stein]. [Edited Book].
2016a A Concise History of the Middle East. 11th edition. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press [co-authored with A. Goldschmidt].
2016b Historical Dictionary of Morocco. Third Edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers [co-authored with Thomas K. Park].
2013a Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Articles
2018a “Eyewitness Djelfa: Daily Life in a Saharan Vichy Labor Camp.” In The Holocaust and North Africa, eds. Aomar Boum and Sarah A. Stein, 149-167. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2018b “Blessings of the Bled: Rural Moroccan Jewry during World War II.” In The Holocaust and North Africa, eds. Aomar Boum and Sarah A. Stein, 113-131. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (co-author Mohammed Hatimi).
2018c “Vichy France.” In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, ed. Geoffrey Megargee, pp. 240-243. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (co-author Cristina Bejan).
2018d “Djelfa.” In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, ed. Geoffrey Megargee, pp. 265-266. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
2018e “Djenien-Bou-Rezg.” In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, ed. Geoffrey Megargee, pp. 266-267. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
2017a “A Moroccan Kabbalist in the White House: Understanding the Relationship between Jared Kushner and Moroccan Jewish Mysticism.” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture and Society 22(3): 146-157.
2017b “The “Mellahs” of Los Angeles: A Moroccan Jewish Community in an American Urban Space.” AJS Perspectives Fall: 42-43.
2016a Jews of Morocco and the Maghreb: History and Historiography. Hespéris-Tamuda. L1-Fascicule (2-3), 2 volumes, eds., Aomar Boum, Jessica Marglin, Khalid Ben-Srhir, Mohammed Kenbib. Rabat: Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, Université Mohammed V.
2016b ““Soundtracks of Jerusalem”: YouTube, North African Rappers and the Fantasies of Resistance.” In Modernity, Minority and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East, S. R. Goldstein-Sabbah and H.L. Murre-van den Berg, eds., pp. 284-309. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
2016c “Cinema: Muslim-Jewish Relations on Screen.” In The Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations, ed. Josef Meri, 401-428. New York and London: Routledge (co-author Dinah Assouline Stillman).
2015 “Dusting Off the Family Archives: Akka as a Case Study of Regional Historiography of the Anti-Atlas Oases.” Hespéris-Tamuda XLIX: 155-186.
2014a “Partners Against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews Respond to Nazism in French North African Colonies, 1936-1940.” The Journal of North African Studies 19(14):550-570.
2014b “The Virtual Genizah:” Emerging North African Jewish and Muslim Identities Online.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46(3):597-601.
2013 “Shoot-outs for the Nation: Football and Politics in Post-Colonial Algerian-Moroccan Relations.” Soccer and Society 14(4):548-564.
2012a “The ‘Jewish Question’ in Postcolonial Moroccan Cinema.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44(3):421-442. (co-authored with Oren Kosansky).
2012b “Festivalizing Dissent in Morocco.” Middle East Report 263(summer): 22-25.
2012c “The Performance of ‘Convivencia’: Communities of Tolerance and the Reification of Toleration.” Religion Compass 6(3):174-184.
2012d “‘Sacred Week’: Re-Experiencing Jewish-Muslim Co-existence in Urban Moroccan Space.” In Sharing the Sacra: The Politics and Pragmatics of Inter-communal Relations around Holy Places, Glenn Bowman, ed. pp. 139-155. UK: Berghahn Books.
2012f “Youth, Political Activism and the Festivalization of Hip-hop Music in Morocco.” In Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics and Society under Mohammed VI, Daniel Zisenwine and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, eds., pp. 161-177. London: Routledge.
2011a “Southern Moroccan Jewry between the Colonial Manufacture of Knowledge and the Postcolonial Historiographical Silence.” In Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, Emily Gottreich and Daniel Schroeter, eds, pp. 73-92. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
2011b “Saharan Jewry: History, Memory and Imagined Identity.” The Journal of North African Studies 16(3): 325-341.
2010a “The Plastic Eye: The Politics of Jewish Representation in Moroccan Museums.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 75(1):49-77.
2010b “From ‘Little Jerusalems’ to the Promised Land: Zionism, Moroccan Nationalism and Rural Jewish Emigration.” The Journal of North African Studies 15(1):51-69.
2010c “Schooling in the Bled: Jewish Education and the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Southern Rural Morocco, 1830-1962.” Journal of Jewish Identities 3(1):1-24.
2008 “The Political Coherence of Educational Incoherence: The Consequences of Educational Specialization in a Southern Moroccan Community.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 39(2):205-223.
