EVENT DETAILS

New Media/New Protests: A Public Panel

Panelists: Laila Lalami, Ben Ehrenreich, Marc Bousquet, and Kavita Philip
Moderator: Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Over the last year, there was a great deal of attention paid to the role that social media such as Facebook and Twitter played in connecting and emboldening those struggling for change, in movements ranging from Occupy Wall Street to uprisings in the Middle East. This panel, which is linked to a History Department class on "Global Protest" but is open to the public, will focus on the interplay between political shifts and changes in media.The participants include two acclaimed L.A.-based novelists (Lalami and Ehrenreich) who have written about Middle Eastern and American protests, respectively; a noted Northern Californian commentator on campus struggles (Bousquet); and local specialists in the history and politics of India (Philip) and China (Wasserstrom).

The main sponsor of this session is UCI's International Center for Writing and Translation, with additional support from UCI's Humanities Collective, History Department and Literary Journalism Program, and from the UC MRU in World History.