Alex Lubin will be at the UNM Bookstore on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. for a reading and book signing of “Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary” (University of North Carolina Press). The event is free and open to the public.

In Geographies of Liberation, an absorbing transnational history, Lubin reveals the vital connections between African American political thought and the people and nations of the Middle East. Spanning the 1850s through the present, and set against a backdrop of major political and cultural shifts around the world, the book demonstrates how international geopolitics, including the ascendance of liberal internationalism, established the conditions within which blacks imagined their freedom and, conversely, the ways in which various Middle Eastern groups have understood and used the African American freedom struggle to shape their own political movements.

Lubin is professor and chair of the American Studies Department at UNM. From 2011-2014 he was director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut. He is also the author of “Romance and Rights: The Politics of Interracial Intimacy” (University Press of Mississippi).

The UNM Bookstore is located at 2301 Central Ave. NE at the intersection of Cornell and Central. Contact Rachel Humpton at 277-1388 or rschill@unm.edu for more information.