Walls of Algiers

Walls of Algiers examines the historical processes that transformed Ottoman Algiers, the “Bulwark of Islam,” into “Alger la blanche,” the colonial urban showpiece – and, after the outbreak of revolution in 1954 – counter-model of France’s global empire. In this volume, the city of Algiers serves as a case study for the analysis of the proactive and reactive social, political, technical, and artistic forces that generate a city’s form. Visual sources – prints, photographs, paintings, architectural drawings, urban designs, and film – are treated as primary evidence that complements and even challenges textual documents. The contributors’ wide-ranging but intersecting essays span the disciplines of art history, social and cultural history, urban studies, and film history. Walls of Algiers presents a multifaceted look at the social use of urban space in a North African city. Its contributors’ innovative methodologies allow important insights into often overlooked aspects of life in a city whose name even today conjures up enchantment as well as incomprehensible violence. Contributors include Julia Clancy-Smith, Omar Carlier, Frances Terpak, Zeynep Çelik, Eric Breitbart, Isabelle Grangaud, and Patricia M. E. Lorcin.

Edited by Zeynep Çelik, Edited by Julia Clancy-Smith,Edited by Frances Terpak

"This is a beautifully illustrated book of serious scholarship and the three editors and the other contributing authors are to be congratulated. Furthermore, although some of the visual material is more widely available and consequently has been previously used elsewhere (for example the postcard images of women discussed by Çelik in chapter four) one of the authors, Frances Terpak, is Curator at the Getty Research Institute and has given all those concerned in this production access to a range of normally unseen visual material. This gives the book a unique quality, offering anyone interested in colonial and post-colonial Algeria a different way of looking not only at the city of Algiers but also at the nature of the colonial experience in Algeria. To read Walls of Algiers is therefore to stimulate reflection. This is not because one disagrees with the analytical stance of the authors but because Walls of Algiers provokes new questions especially for those of us who experienced the period of decolonization, however distantly, and who have since spent much of their subsequent academic career studying the events of the period.... It is a fascinating collection that should be read by anyone interested in Algeria and the multivariate processes of Algeria’s colonization.

Contributors include Julia Clancy-Smith, Omar Carlier, Frances Terpak, Zeynep Çelik, Eric Breitbart, Isabelle Grangaud, and Patricia M. E. Lorcin