In this episode Peter Wien hosts Dylan Baun for a discussion of 20th century youth politics in the Middle East based on Baun's recent book Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920-1958 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). The conversation covers Lebanese youth organizations from their inception in the period of French Mandate rule between the two World Wars to the first Lebanese civil war of 1958. Despite the similarities between the youth movements in terms of rituals, appearances, and comportment, they played an essential role in the drawing of sectarian boundaries foreshadowing decades of violent conflict.

Dylan Baun is an Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East and Islamic World History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dylan received his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Arizona. His first book, published with Cambridge University Press in 2021, is titled Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920-1958.

Peter Wien is Professor for Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland in College Park. His latest book is Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2017). Wien serves as President of The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII).

Edited by: Sanjana Bajaj
Music: Little Idea by Scott Holmes (scottholmesmusic.com)/CC BY-NC