History Research Seminar - Charles al-Hayek

Mythologized Pasts, Digital Presents: Public History Between Critical Practice and Instrumentalization in Contemporary Lebanon

For centuries, the qawwāl, vernacular poets of the oral tradition, circulated mythologized images of the past through poetic registers deeply embedded in Lebanese communal life. The migration of these narratives into the digital sphere has sharpened rather than diminished their mythological character, as the structural logic of social media platforms rewards emotional resonance over evidential rigour. Public history presents itself as a potential corrective, equipping general publics with instruments of rational historical understanding in a saturated and contested information environment. The discipline, however, occupies an ambivalent position in the Lebanese context. Its methods and registers have been appropriated by sectarian actors as instruments of political mobilization, functioning less as historical pedagogy than as propaganda. Public history is simultaneously a resource for critical historical literacy and a terrain vulnerable to the very mythologization it purports to contest.

This talk situates seven conflicting perspectives on Lebanese history within their political and confessional contexts, examines their instrumentalization through social media, and interrogates the capacity, and the limits, of public history to offer remedial approaches in a media environment structurally incentivized toward polarization. 

Bio

Charles al-Hayek is a Lebanese public historian and researcher. He founded Heritage and Roots in 2020, one of the first public history platforms in the Arab region. He serves as Head of Archives at the Collège Saint-Joseph d'Antoura, Researcher at the American University of Beirut, and Custodian of the SADER Legal Archives, and is the creator and presenter of Lubnan Bi Qissa (Lebanon in a Story), a public history show currently in its fifth season on LBCI.

For any questions please contact: T.Paksoy2@newcastle.ac.uk

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