AIMS Annual Conference in Oran, Algeria Application Deadline Extended (15 February)

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Jan 28, 2019
AIMS Annual Conference in Oran, Algeria Application Deadline Extended (15 February)

AIMS Annual Conference in Oran, Algeria Application Deadline Extended (15 February)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

2019 AIMS Annual Conference in Oran, Algeria
Extended deadline: February 15

The American Institute for Maghrib Studies is seeking proposals for its 2019 annual conference. The annual AIMS conference is a signature event that brings together delegations of scholars from the US, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, as well as individual scholars from Mauritania and Libya. The 2019 AIMS conference will be held in Oran in late summer 2019. AIMS members who are interested in proposing a theme with resonance across North Africa are encouraged to submit a formal proposal no later than January 15, 2019. The selection committee will look favorably on applications that envision an interdisciplinary conference that incorporates both historical and contemporary perspectives.

Up to USD20,000 will be made available to support the annual conference. Additional details about the conference, as well as the proposal requirements, can be found below. Please also see full pdf to the left.

Questions? Please contact Mia Fuller at miafuller@gmail.com

___________________________________________________

Overview

One of the signature activities of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) has long been the annual conference. The annual conference brings together delegations of scholars from the US, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, as well as individual scholars from Mauritania and Libya, to address an important theme in North African Studies. The theme chosen for the annual meeting becomes a key theme for AIMS activities over a two-year period. The overall conference program includes the following components:

  1. The 2019 Annual Conference;
  2. A session at the 2019 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Meeting. This session can take the form of a panel, roundtable, or thematic conversation; and
  3. A special issue of the Journal of North Africa Studies (JNAS) and/or other publication(s).

The conference organizer(s) will be responsible for organizing and overseeing all three components of the conference program, with support and assistance from the Conference Program Committee of the Board of Directors, and the Director of the Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA).

Conference Details

The 2019 AIMS Conference will be held in Oran, Algeria. Logistical support for the conference will be provided by the staff of CEMA and AIMS Program Manager located in Oran. Proposals on any theme of relevance to North African Studies are welcome. Conferences typically take place over two days and include 15-20 participants. The 2019 conference will take place in late July.

Conference Budget

Conference organizers will have access to USD20,000 to cover expenses associated with the annual conference. There is some discretion in how these funds are used. However, the following expenses will be covered by this funding:

  • Conference facilities
  • Round trip transportation for all Maghribi presenters to attend the conference
  • Hotel/board for all presenters (US and Maghribi)
  • Per diem for each presenter
  • Interpreting and translating costs (as applicable)

CEMA staff will be able to assist the conference organizer(s) in developing a more specific budget for the conference. Conference organizers are strongly encouraged to identify and pursue additional sources of funding. This can include supplementary funding for the conference itself as well as funding for the MESA session, travel for US participants (including conference organizers), and/or additional publications. In kind contributions from the institution(s) of the conference organizer(s) will also be considered. The Conference Program Committee will assist conference organizers when possible. Funding for the special issue of JNAS is provided directly by the publisher and does not need to be incorporated into the conference budget.

The Maghribi Grants Program

In conjunction with the annual conference and capitalizing on the selected theme, the Conference Program Committee will oversee a small grants program for Maghribi Scholars. One scholar each from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco will be funded to participate in the 2019 AIMS Conference and will receive a small stipend to carry out related research. Specifics about the program will be released once the conference theme is chosen. Funding for this program is separate from the annual conference budget. Selection of the scholars will be made jointly by the Conference Program Committee and the conference organizers.

Timeline

  • Submission deadline for applications: January 15, 2019
  • Proposal selected and applicants notified: late January 2019
  • Initial conference call of organizers with the Conference Program Committee: late January 2019
  • Conference theme announced: late January 2019
  • Call for papers (in English/French) circulated: February 1, 2019
  • Delegations/presenters selected: March 20, 2019
  • Preliminary agenda developed and announced: April 1, 2019
  • Conference convened: late July 2019
  • Conference report submitted: September 2019
  • Session at MESA held: November 2019
  • Special issue of JNAS: To be determined

Proposal Guidelines

AIMS members who are interested in organizing the 2019 annual conference must submit a proposal by January 15, 2019. The formal proposal should be no more than three pages (in English) and should include the following sections:

  1. Background and significance
    – Why is this theme important for North African Studies?
    – What gaps in knowledge and scholarship will this theme fill?

  2. Conference program activities
    – What activities will be included as a part of this overall effort?
    – What is the timeline for those activities? Please include proposed conference dates.
    – How will the components (annual conference, MESA meeting, publication) be integrated?

  3. Possible participants
    – Formal commitment from possible participants is not required at the time of submission. However, proposals should outline possible contributors to the conference program (US scholars, Maghribi scholars, etc.)

  4. Organizational structure
    – If there is more than one proposed conference organizer, how will responsibilities be divided?
    – Who else will be involved?

  5. Outputs and outcomes
    – Will a final report be provided?
    – What publication(s) are envisioned?
    – What will be the outcomes of committing to this theme?

  6. Provisional budget
    – How will the $20,000 be used?
    – Will any other resources be required? If so, how will those be secured?

Proposals should be sent electronically to Mia Fuller (miafuller@gmail.com). Please include a cover letter/cover email with the full contact information for the proposed organizer(s) as well as a copy of the CVs of all organizers.

[This was originally published by The American Institute for Maghrib Studies]

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
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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