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Lecture in Rabat Reveals Marginalized Visual Histories in African Comics
In an era where imagery increasingly competes with text in chronicling history, the age-old question resurfaces: who tells the story, and who is left on the margins? From this perspective, the Royal Institute for Research on the History of Morocco is fostering an intellectual discussion on forgotten narratives, this time through comics and African visual memory.
In this context, the institute, affiliated with the Moroccan Academy, will host a scholarly lecture titled “Inside the Margin: Visual Histories of Secondary Narratives in African Comics” on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, starting at 5 PM at its premises. The lecture will be delivered by Professor Omar Boum, a member of the Moroccan Academy.
The aim of this lecture is to shed light on African comic memoirs and stories as expressions of a contemporary visual movement, drawing from methodological and artistic approaches that differ in motivations and inquiries from classical European models. It seeks to highlight marginalized voices and narratives that have remained outside the official discourse, revealing their value in documenting individual experiences and human pathways, using oral history, archival research, and visual documentation.
Through this lens, the lecture approaches the history and anthropology of North and West Africa during the colonial and post-colonial phases as intertwined spaces of memory and daily life, rather than merely closed political stations.
Professor Omar Boum is recognized as a leading researcher in the field of historical anthropology. He serves as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and heads the “Morris Amado” Chair for Sephardic Studies within the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the same university. He is also an associate professor at the International University of Rabat. His research interests focus on issues of history and anthropology, Islamic and Jewish studies, and studies of the Middle East and North Africa.
He has published several works that reflect this academic trajectory, including “Moroccan Jews and the Discourse of Memory,” “The Outcasts in the Vichy Desert Camps” (co-authored), and “The Last Pendulum: A Tale Between the Atlas and Its History” (co-authored), which advocate for the margins as an entry point to understanding history from its most human perspectives.
