Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Graduate Student Conference
New York, 27-28 February 2014
Knox Hall, Columbia University
606 West 122nd Street
Presented by the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Columbia University
Thursday 27 February
8.30 - 9.30 am: Registration (Knox Lobby) and Light Breakfast (Knox 207 and 208)
9.30 - 10.30 am: Welcome Remarks (Matan Cohen) and Plenary Address (Sudipta Kaviraj) - Knox 208
SESSION 1: 10.45 am - 12.45 pm
Scanning the Shelves of the African Islamic Library - Knox 207
- Wendell Marsh, Reading Sudanic Africa in the Margins: the Perils of Commentary
- Kimberly Wortmann, Intellectual Cartographies in the Medieval Western Sahel (c. 1464-1627)
- Ariela Marcus-Sells, Spells and Prayers: Discussing Muslim Practice in Saharan Society
- Lori De Lucia, On the Edges of Mediterranean History: Finding Evidence for Sub-Saharan African Narratives in the 16th Century Kingdom of Naples
- Discussant: Mamadou Diouf
- Moderator: Tommaso Manfredini
Narrating Progress - Knox 208
- Bader al-Saif, Surveying Thaqafat al-Takhalluf in Modern & Contemporary Arabic Literature: an Intellectual Historiography
- Taylor Moore, "Superstitious Women": Cultivating the Upper Egyptian Fellaha in SemiColonial Egypt
- Andrew Stedman Alger, Religious Education and Revolution in Hashemite Iraq
- Yasmine Djerbal, Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Contexts: An Algerian Experience
- Discussant: Sudipta Kaviraj
- Moderator: Sohini Pillai
1 - 1.45 pm: Lunch - Knox 207 & 208
SESSION 2: 2 -4 PM
Islam, Modernity and Political Form: The Impossible State - Knox 207
- Hasan Azad, "The Islamic State is Not a Dream": Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Thinking Through the Modern State
- Kamal Soleimani, Islamist Arab Nationalism: The Arab-Centrism of Islamic Political Thought between the late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
- Yuenmei Wong, Shari’a-Queers: Islamic Law and the Construction of New Muslims’ Sexual Identities in Malaysia
- Discussant: Wael Hallaq
- Moderator: Neda Bolourchi
Locating Culture - Knox 208
- Mina Khanlarzadeh, Lalehzari Music: Unsung Artists of Iranian Song
- Salha Reema Fadda, The Political Economy of Cultural Intervention in Palestine
- Katie Logan, Google It: Virtual Maps and the Anxieties of Forgetting in Modern Arabic Literature
- Discussant: Muhsin al-Musawi
- Moderator: Sarah Hawas
Racialized Cartographies - Knox 403
- Vishal Kamath, Hybridity and Spatial Imagination in the Persian Gulf: Locating the Banu Ka’b Arabs from 1707 to 1775
- Pascal Missak Abidor, Genealogy of a Geography: Jabal Amiil between `Asabiya and Wataniya
- Owain Lawson, “History is Merely a Bird of Passage”: Environmental Determinism, Racialization, and Nationalism in Mandate Lebanon
- Andrea Daniel Rosengarten, Other "Coloureds": Categorization and Identity of Colonial Namibia`s Mixed-Race Communities, 1914-1939
- Moderator: Andrew Ollett
SESSION 3: 4.15 - 6.15 PM
Education, Knowledge, and Modernity - Knox 207
- Salmaan Mirza, Preaching Business Education
- Kenan Tekin, Knowledge and Social Imaginary in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: Sacaklizade and Yahya Nevi’s Organization of Disciplines
- Shaadi Khoury, Al-Hilal`s Survey of 1919-1920 and the Nahda`s Contentious Language Debate
- Discussant: Linda Sayed
- Moderator: Casey Primel
Humor and Re-Appropriation in Palestinian and Hebrew Literatures - Knox 208
- Danielle Drori, What`s Funny about Mistranslation?: The First Translation of Don-Quixote into Hebrew
- Liron Mor, What`s Funny about Occupation?: Re-appropriations in Imil Habibi`s Pessopsimist
- Discussant: Dan Miron
- Moderator: Roni Henig
Islamic Reform in Modern Thought and Politics - Knox 403
- Jacob Olidort, The Mosque as Message: Albani and the Politicization of Piety in 1950`s Damascus
- Ayse Betul Tekin, Muhammad Abduh’s Approach to Religion: Between Tradition and Modernity
- Zahra Sabri, Citizen Khan and the Face of Non-‘fundamentalist’ Islam in Pakistan today
- Discussant: Hossein Kamaly
- Moderator: Angela Giordani
7 pm: Dinner - Location TBA
Friday 28 February
8.30 - 9.30 am: Registration (Knox Lobby) & Light Breakfast (Knox 207 & 208)
SESSION 4: 9.15 - 11.15 AM
Colonizing Strategies - Knox 207
- Abhijit Sarkar, The State in the Kitchen: State-Intervention in Food and Popular Responses in Wartime India (1939-45)
- Oscar Jarzmik, "Adjusting to Powerlessness" in Occupied Jerusalem: Ethnopsychiatry and the Organizing Principles of Municipal Policy after the June 1967 War
- Hashim Bin Rashid, Enclosing the River Indus
- Noa Shaindlinger, Point of No Return
- Discussant: Michael Griffiths
- Moderator: Matan Cohen
Classical Islam: Ethics, Language and Epistemology - Knox 403
- Osman Yilmaz, A Dating of al-Suyûtî’s Grammatical Khilâf Book
- Antonia Sigrid Bosanquet, The Polemics of Here and There: Place, Space and Telling in Aḥkām Ahl al-Dhimma
- Giovanni Carrera, The Epistemological Role of Language in al-Rāzī`s hermeneutics
- Discussant: Katharina Ivanyi
- Moderator: Sohaib Khan
SESSION 5: 11.30 AM - 1.30 PM
Regimes of Labor - Knox 403
- Claudie Fioroni, From “Politics of Work” to “Politics at Work”: An Analysis of Subjection Processes at the Jordan Phosphate Mine Company
- Cihan Tekay, The State, Global Capital and Women Workers in Turkey: A Case Study of the 2006-2007 Novamed Strike
- Matan Kaminer, The Wages of Agricultural Work in Israel
- Li Xiaoyue, Illness as Discourse-Medical Representations of Worker`s Diseases
- Discussant: Timothy Mitchell
- Moderator: Matthew Ghazarian
Visual Politics - Knox 207
- Hira Nabi, Between Islam and Cinema in Pakistan: Spectacle and Jaloos
- Taylor Zajicek, Capturing Turkish-Soviet Convergence on Film
- Nour K Sacranie, Alternative Remembrances: Memory, History and the Civil War in Contemporary Lebanese Art
- Anna Dowell, Of Bodies and Buildings: Reading Claims to Citizenship and Grievability in Images of Violence
- Discussant: TBA
- Moderator: Farbod Honarpisheh
Rethinking the Political - Knox 208
- Ahmed Dardir, Martyr Genealogies: The Practice of al Khawarij and Umm al Mu`minin as Subjugated Knowledge
- Matan Cohen, Disengaged Lives: Palestine and the Question of Vulnerability
- Anna-Esther Younes, The New Europe and the Figure of the Jew
- Marianna Reis, Strategies of Legitimization: Deploying Palestinians as Israeli Arab Agents of the Zionist State
- Discussant: Judith Butler
- Moderator: Nasser Abourahme
1.30 - 3.30 pm: Lunch - Knox 207 & 208
SESSION 6: 3.30 - 5.30 PM
Islamic Law and Jurisprudence - Knox 207
- Rahile Yilmaz, Criticizing Muslim Traditions: A Critical Analysis of Muslim and Western Academic Approaches to the Study of Ḥadīth
- Mohammad Syifa Amin Widigdo, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī on Jadal: Theological-Juridical Dialectic in the Eleventh Century Nishapur
- Omar Farahat, Divine Command Ethics in the Jurisprudence of Abū Bakr b. al-Bāqillānī
- Sohaib Khan, Efficiency Matters: Virtues of Maximization and the Moral Failings of Islamic Banking and Finance
- Discussant: TBA
- Moderator: Omar Farahat
Modern Ottoman History: Urban Politics and Regional Growth - Knox 208
- Koca Mehmet Kentel, Cosmopolitanism over Dead Bodies: Subway, Cemetery, Garden and Urban Dualities in the Late 19th Century Istanbul
- Jeffery Dyer, The Growth of an Ottoman Consular Network in the Indian Ocean, 1849-1914
- Baris Tasyakan, The Politics of Fire: Ottoman Istanbul in the Late Eighteenth Century
- Nora Cherishian Lessersohn, ‘Provincial Cosmopolitanism’ in Late Ottoman Anatolia: Recovering Armenian Complexity through Hovhannes Cherishian’s (1886-1967) Memoir
- Discussant: Christine Philiou
- Moderator: Kenan Tekin
Medieval Arts and Sciences - Knox 403
- Owen Cornwall, Alexander and the Astrolabe in India
- Naveen Kanalu, Mārga/ Desi or the ‘Path’ and the ‘Country’ in Vernacularization: The Shaping of Pre-modern Kannada Literary Culture
- Marcela Schlueter, To the Letter: Examining Paratextuality and Pedagogy in the Letters of Abū’l Qāsim al-Junayd, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, and Niẓāmuddīn Auliyā
- Discussant: Mana Kia
- Moderator: Kyle Schirmann
6 - 7 pm: Keynote Session - 501 Schermerhorn
- Introduction: Wendell Marsh.
- Keynote Address: Ruth Marshall, “Global” Christianity in the Postcolony: Reflections on the Politics of Knowledge
7.30 pm: Dinner
Location TBA