Christin is a PhD student and employee at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She holds a BA in History and Philosophy and an MA in History from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research focuses on Syrian history in the 20th century, particularly the intellectual and social history of the Arab Left and Marxism. She is interested in the question of how historiography is and can be rewritten after the Arab Uprisings.Christin is a PhD student and employee at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She holds a BA in History and Philosophy and an MA in History from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research focuses on Syrian history in the 20th century, particularly the intellectual and social history of the Arab Left and Marxism. She is interested in the question of how historiography is and can be rewritten after the Arab Uprisings.

Research Project

Localizing the global Arab Left

Communist Perspectives on Oppositional Unrest in Syria 1976-1982

The Historiography on Syria tends to neglect or distort the domestic oppositional unrests in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, this historic moment represents a nucleus of accelerated change that raised controversial but fundamental questions about the making of postcolonial Syria. Questioning the 'stability' narrative that has dominated Syrian historiography, a history of Syrian opposition beyond a sectarianized division of society has yet to be written. The Syrian regime of Hafiz al-Asad either co-opted, or banned, suppressed, and persecuted any opposition. Nevertheless, there was a diverse yet fragmented Left in Syria whose traces enrich historiography. 
 
Originating from communist reading circles, the Communist Labor League (Rabitat al-ʿAmal al-Shuyuʿi, abbreviated CLL) was founded in Aleppo in August 1976 and became a party (Hizb al-ʿAmal al- Shuyuʿi, abbreviated CLP) in Beirut in August 1981 and dissolved when its last active members were arrested in February 1992. My PhD project initially researches the neglected history of the CLL/CLP and subsequently explores its perspectives on oppositional unrest in Syria 1976-1982. Contributing to a historiography of a violently repressed local Left, which was part of a similarly defeated global Left, I situate my research in a 'less than global' intellectual history of the Arab New Left. The league/party's publications provide a contemporaneous, violently oppressed, and hitherto overlooked perspective that is enhanced by recent recollections from former party members speaking about their past. Analyzing the CLL/CLP's perception of 'thinking the world' in its historical 'problem-space' might question existing understandings of opposition and enrich the understanding of the Arab Left.