A new podcast episode from the Middle East Report in-house publication, MERIP, features a discussion of how migration from sub-Saharan Africa has reshaped Moroccan literature and, by extension, Moroccan identity over the last three decades. The episode, released February 13, 2026, centers on the essay “The Sub-Saharan Turn in Moroccan Literature” by Brahim El Guabli, which originally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Middle East Report.
The podcast, hosted by MERIP Executive Director James Ryan, explores El Guabli’s analysis of recent Moroccan novels and their engagement with the increasing presence of sub-Saharan African migrants. The conversation likewise delves into the development of El Guabli’s concept of “saharanism,” a framework further elaborated in his newly published book, Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences, released by the University of California Press in November 2025.
El Guabli is an associate professor of comparative thought and literature at Johns Hopkins University, and identifies as Black and Amazigh Indigenous from Morocco. His work focuses on literatures of the Tamazgha region – encompassing North Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa – and the broader Middle East. He received an Honorable Mention from the Middle East Librarians Association in 2024 for his scholarship.
Desert Imaginations builds upon the themes explored in his earlier essay, examining the historical construction of the Sahara as a cultural and political space. El Guabli’s previous work includes “Forgettable Black and Amazigh Bodies: Boujemâa Hebaz and the Moroccan Racial Politics of Amnesia,” published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East in 2024, and “The Idea of Tamazgha: Current Articulations and Scholarly Potential” in the inaugural issue of Tamazgha Studies Journal in 2023. His research draws on scholarship including Ghislaine Lydon’s On Trans-Saharan Trails and Shamil Jeppie’s forthcoming Writing Timbuktu.
MERIP is currently accepting submissions for its summer issue, focused on visual art and cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa, with a submission deadline of February 23rd.
