{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fradio-ifriqiya-powered-by-afikra.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Faomar-boum-3hwKnLrD","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Visualizing Histories Inside the Margins of Morocco & North Africa | Aomar Boum","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/1ce0a58c-3e05-4d4b-a2e7-f3ffb869b215/f7a8575c-a4b9-4373-ae15-07f258953d0b/radio-20ifriqiya-20partnership-20project-20file.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"Professor Aomar Boum talks about his latest book, The Last Rekkas, which offers an indigenous, counter-visual approach to the work of colonial artist-ethnographers. A collaboration with his daughter, Majdouline Boum Mendoza, that combines her visual work with the life stories of his father Faraji that's thought to be Morocco’s last known rekkas, a mail courier who walked thousands of miles delivering letters under colonial rule. The Last Rekkas is a decolonial project, which began with ethnographic studies in the 1990s in a village in Southern Morocco that uses art and text to center the stories of marginalized \"ordinary people\". A sociocultural anthropologist who holds the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, professor Boum discusses his work on religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. The conversation explores the book’s multimodal approach, contrasting it with Boum’s previous work \"Undesirables\" and reflecting on the tradition of Moroccan historian Mokhtar Soussi. We also delve into the necessity of engaging with colonial ethnography to create alternative narratives, using figures like Jean Besancenot to frame the story of his father, a mail carrier (rekkas) whose history was centralized but his voice erased. The episode concludes with a discussion of the book's audience—the coming generations of Moroccans—and how materiality and space, like cemeteries and everyday objects, can serve as archives to uncover untold histories in North Africa."}