Abstract

The decline of French colonialism in Algeria and the Algerian War lay at the fault line of several tectonic forces. World War I, World War II, and the Cold War challenged France’s global stature, destabilized the colonial apparatus, and fostered unprecedented intercolonial intellectual exchange. These events provided the global context for Algeria’s national revolution, a prolonged period of conflict that was all in one a civil war that redefined Algerian identity, a political and military scandal that led to the downfall of the French Fourth Republic in 1958, influenced Cold War politics, and continues to shape national identity in both countries today. Focused on this complicated milieu, this dissertation uses Algeria as a vantage point and visual culture as a lens to examine the phenomena of decolonization, nationalism, Pan-Arabism, African unity, and Third World internationalism, and demonstrates that, in the instance of Algerian independence, national sovereignty and visual sovereignty were correlated concepts.

Committee Chair

Elizabeth C Childs

Committee Members

Roger Benjamin, John R Klein, Angela Miller, William E Wallace

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Art History & Archaeology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1-9-2024

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2360-6588

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