Event details
We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria: Wendy Pearlman
Professor Wendy Pearlman is visiting Princeton to discuss her new book: We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria.
This talk is cosponsored by the Workshop on Arab Political Development (WAPD), the Qualitative Research Colloquium (QRC), The Democracy and Development Research Initiative and the Comparative Politics Colloquium at Princeton University.
Book Presentation: We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria
What can personal stories teach us about the conflict in Syria? Since 2012, Professor Wendy Pearlman has carried out open-ended interviews with more than 300 displaced Syrians across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Her new book, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (HarperCollins, June 2017) uses these interviews to chronicle the origins and evolution of the Syrian war solely through the words of ordinary people who have lived in its unfolding. It explores how Syrians’ individual narratives coalesce into a collective narrative whose arc paints a portrait of silence and intimidation under an oppressive regime before 2011, expresses the transformative experience of participation in protest against that regime, conveys the resilience of communities enduring unspeakable violence thereafter, and offers a window into the challenge of becoming and being a refugee. Upon sharing selections from the book, Pearlman will conclude with lessons about how storytelling can enrich the study of politics, and vice versa.
Purchase We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria from Labyrinth Books online or 122 Nassau Street, Princeton NJ.
Wendy Pearlman is the Martin and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she specializes in the Middle East. She is the author of three books, We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (HarperCollins 2017), Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada(Nation Books, 2003), as well as more than a dozen academic articles or book chapters.
This event is cosponsored by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.