Call for Papers: Covering the Arab Spring (September 1-2, 2011)

[The University of Copenhagen. Image from unknown archive.] [The University of Copenhagen. Image from unknown archive.]

Call for Papers: Covering the Arab Spring (September 1-2, 2011)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The University of Copenhagen invites proposals for the two day conference:

COVERING THE ARAB SPRING. The MIDDLE EAST IN THE MEDIA – THE MEDIA IN THE MIDDLE EAST
(Copenhagen, September 1-2, 2011)
 
This conference seeks to bring together scholars from various disciplines to exchange their descriptions and analyses of different national perspectives in the coverage of events in Arab countries throughout the first half of the year 2011 that have been referred to as the Arab Spring.

Media coverage and international visibility played a big role not only for the sake of being informed about events in another city, nation or region but it was a major catalyst and tool for those demonstrating in different Arab cities. Being visible in national or international media, on facebook and twitter was one of the major means for protestor’s visibility in their struggle for both national and international support.

Perception and media coverage of the developments in Arab countries in early 2011 in Europe and the US have been shaped by national frameworks of Islam perception, especially during the first days and weeks of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. As the unrests gained momentum and affected more and more countries, the frames for presenting and analyzing them in media and politics were challenged and finally changed considerably.

Thus, the main objective of the conference, and subsequent journal proposal, is to shed light on the role of TV, press, and social media in political unrests and the articulation or ignorance of frustrations of Arab populations.

Main aims of the conference:

  1. Find a way to structure and analyze the media coverage of the uprisings in the Arab World 2011 in order to enhance academic research on media and Islam.
  2. Provide mapping of traditional/new/social media and mediatized space in the Middle East under the revolutions and also to provide grounds for a critical reflection with regard to research strategies and methodologies which are being applied to the analysis of interaction between media, politics and new cultural practices.
  3. Publish substantial papers in an special edition of a peer reviewed Journal.


This approach raises questions related to media and opinion formation as well as a number of methodological questions of general interest for media and area studies. It connects research interests on media in the Middle East and on the perception of Islam in Europe.

These topics will be investigated at several panels and a podium discussion in order to share the academic discussion with a broader audience in Denmark.

The following questions will be addressed:

  • What were the dominant and shifting issues in the representations and political assessment of current events?
    • Islamic extremism, destabilization of the Middle East, rise of the Muslim brotherhood, Islam and democracy, dictatorships, social media, youth culture, demographic pressure, Western loyalties and interests.
    • How is the ongoing development of the Arab Spring reflected in choice and change of perspective (within and outside the region)?
    • How did traditional media use social media as source of information? (Interaction and dependence of different types of media)
  • In what ways have agents of change been using media in order to support their cause?
    • How did agents make use of different media simultaneously realizing media’s different potentials?
  • What was the role of experts of Islam, terrorism and radicalism, on social media and the Middle East in media coverage?
    • In what way were researchers, scholars, and journalists included in the explanation and contextualization of current developments? 
  • What role did the national situations and environments for media have on the coverage?
    • What was the role of foreign correspondents in covering current events?
    • In what way did restrictions of the freedom of press hinder reporters?
    • How has media changed during the Arab Spring and to which degree have they met the requests for accountability and transparency?
       

Submission of proposals:

  • Abstracts about 300 words should be sent by 30th June 2011 to both: Riem Spielhaus (rsp@teol.ku.dk)  & Ehab Galal (ehab@hum.ku.dk)
  • Abstract, following this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract,
  • Short CV (max. 150 words).
     

For contributions to the special edition a full paper of 6000 words should be submitted no later than 1st October 2011 and will then be subject to peer reviews and possible revisions. The selection of the papers will be based on quality and relevance to the conference themes.

Only accepted papers will get an answer by the date mentioned below. Selected papers will be published in a special volume in English.

Deadlines:

  • Submission of abstracts: 30th June 2011.
  • Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15th July 2011.
  • Submission of full papers: 1st October 2011.

 
To send proposals and for additional information please contact the organizers:
 

Riem Spielhaus
Research Fellow at the Centre for European
Islamic Thought
Department of Systematic Theology
University of Copenhagen
Koebmagergade 46
DK-1150 Copenhagen K.
Denmark
E-mail: rsp@teol.ku.dk

 

Ehab Galal
Assistant Professor in Modern Islam and Middle Eastern Studies
Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen
Snorresgade 17-19
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
E-mail: ehab@hum.ku.dk

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412