What is everyday life under autocracy like? We have an image of violence, all-powerful elites, and jackbooted thugs, but many people living in modern autocratic regimes instead experience mundane repression, self-censorship, and distrust of formal institutions. In this panel, several Stanford scholars who research and who have lived through authoritarian rule reflect on how autocracies govern people’s daily lives, and how it is possible to resist these incursions. At a time when democracy is threatened in many countries, these experiences and lessons in resistance are more relevant than ever.

Panel

Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, the Director of the Europe Center, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Her research focuses on the historical development of the state and its transformation, political parties, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. Other areas of interest include populism, informal institutions, and causal mechanisms.

Jovana Lazić is an historian whose research and teaching interests focus on belligerent occupation and the social and cultural history of the First World War; urban history; and the Habsburg Empire, the Balkans and Yugoslavia. She is author of several book chapters and articles on gender and war and the Habsburg-occupied Serbian capital of Belgrade during World War I.  A graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and recipient of a diplome from Sciences Po-Paris, she received her PhD from Yale University. Jovana came to Stanford in 2006 to teach in the History Department and joined the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies in 2013.

Haiyan Lee is Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Walter A. Haas Professor of the Humanities. Her first book, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950, is a critical genealogy of the idea of “love” (qing) in modern Chinese literary and cultural history. It was awarded the 2009 Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for the best English-language book on post-1900 China. It is the first recipient of this prize in the field of modern Chinese literature. Her second book,  The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination, examines how the figure of “the stranger”—foreigner, migrant, class enemy, woman, animal, ghost—in Chinese fiction, film, television, and exhibition culture tests the moral limits of a society known for the primacy of consanguinity and familiarity. Her third book,  A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination investigates Chinese visions of “justice” at the intersection of narrative, law, and ethics. She is working on a new project on animism, cognition, and the Chinese environmental imagination.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

Ali Yaycıoğlu is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies Forum. He is a historian specializing in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. His research examines various dimensions of political, economic, and legal institutions and practices, as well as the social and cultural dynamics of the Ottoman world and Turkey, from the sixteenth century to the present. He is also interested in using digital tools to understand, visualize, and conceptualize historical developments. Dr. Yaycıoğlu teaches courses on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey; Empires, Markets & Networks in the Early Modern World; the Age of Revolutions; Histories of Democracy and Capitalism; and Digital Humanities.

This event is sponsored by The Europe Center; Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL); Office of the Dean of Humanities & Sciences; and CREEES Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.