History Department - University of Texas at Austin Congratulations to History PhD Candidate Spenser Rapone, whose article in Modern Intellectual History, "The Metaphysical Universe of Michel ʿAflaq and His Party: A Reappraisal of the Baʿth," won the Syrian Studies Association's Best Article of 2024. The prize committee had this to say about Spenser's work: We found Rapone's article an ambitious and successful effort to understand the thought and work of ʿAflaq in its own terms. Rapone's deep investigation of the metaphysical dimensions of ʿAflaq's thought attempts to put the Baʿth founder in a wider Arab and anti-colonial context. We thought the article would be widely read and long consulted by other scholars with comparable interests.
