The purpose of the AIMS GSA is to promote dialog among graduate students who are interested in or working on studies related to northern Africa, defined broadly as Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Members come from nearly every discipline imaginable: from anthropology to art history, from bioclimatology to political science, and from history to economics.
2021-2022 GSA President
Sophia Mo, Columbia University
Sophia Mo is a fifth-year PhD candidate in French and Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University specializing in postcolonial theory, transnational anticolonialism, translation theory, and feminist theory. Currently, her research focuses on Algerian history and literature in the mid-twentieth century. Interrogating the place of women in the construction of postcolonial communities, her dissertation examines women’s journalistic writings in Arabic and French during the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962) and the first post-independence regime (1962-1965). By bringing to the fore the understudied work of female journalists in constructing the Algerian nation and establishing links to other national liberation movements, Sophia challenges the masculinist historiography of the Algerian anticolonial struggle.