UPCOMING EVENTS

April-May 2008 Events

Unless otherwise noted, all events will be held at the Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square S,at the corner of West 4th and Sullivan Streets. Events are free and open to the academic community. Seating is limited and available on a first come, first serve basis. The Kevorkian Visual Culture Series is co-organized with the Center for Religion and Media and the Center for Media, Culture and History.

Visual Culture Series
Monday April 7, 5-7 pm,
“Silence is Silver,” artist’s talk by Huda Lutfi

A professor of Islamic culture and history at the American University of Cairo, Huda Lutfi has emerged as one of Egypt’s most notable contemporary image makers. Her art brings together a feminist sensibility, with a broad knowledge of Arab Muslim culture, and a dedication to architectural preservation. Through the making of art and in her writing and lectures, Lutfi seeks to problematize censorship—its impact on the artist and the strategies artists use to confront it. Based in the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, she has exhibited widely in Egypt and also in France, Netherlands, Germany, Greece and the USA.

Eurasian Connections Series
Wednesday April 9, 5-7 pm
“A Clash of Islams in the Northern Caucasus: The Sufi-Salafi Confrontation,” by Alexander Knysh

In a talk organized by Eurasian Connections at NYU, Alexander Knysh will speak on the ongoing conflict between two mutually hostile trends within Islam—Sufism and Wahhabism/Salafism—as it is shaped by local factors in the former Soviet republics of the Northern Caucasus. Knysh teaches Islam in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His latest book, Islam in Historical Perspective, is forthcoming in April 2008. This talk is co-sponsored by the Kevorkian Center, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, and the SSRC.

Research Workshop
Monday, April 14, 5-7:00 pm
Khalid Medani, "Joining Jihad:
Globalization, Informal Markets and Islamic Militancy in Cairo"
Dr. Khalid Mustafa Medani is currently assistant professor of politics and Islamic Studies at McGill University. He is currently working on a book manuscript that focuses on the political economy of Islamic and Ethnic Politics in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia. His research also centers on the socio-economic factors behind Islamic militant recruitment in Egypt, and the Horn of Africa. Dr. Medani has published on ethnic conflict and the funding of the Islamist movement in Sudan, the question of informal finance, state collapse, and terrorism in Somalia, and the obstacles to state building in Iraq. Medani has taught at Oberlin and Stanford.

Research Workshop Series
Monday April 21, 5-7 pm
“Dreaming in Un-Dreamy Times: On Ethics and the Imagination in Contemporary Egypt,” by Amira Mittermaier

Amira Mittermaier teaches in the Departments of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University in 2006. Her workshop paper is part of a larger project on the ethical, political, and religious dimensions of Egypt’s contemporary dream landscapes. Through her research, Mittermaier ultimately argues for an anthropology of the imagination, one that moves beyond the visible and observable presence.

Distinguished Lecture
Friday, April 25, 4-6 pm
"Autobiography and the Great War: Rethinking Arabo-Turkish Identity after Gallipoli”, by Salim Tamari

Currently a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Salim Tamari is Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and teaches sociology at Birzeit University. Tamari is the editor of Hawliyyat al Quds and Jerusalem Quarterly. He is the author of several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Jerusalem 1948 (2001); Pilgrims, Lepers, and Stuffed Cabbage: Essays on the Cultural History of Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem (2005); and Ihsan’s War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (2008). A collection of his essays titled, The Contested Modernity of Palestine, is forthcoming with the University of California Press. Tamari has taught at NYU, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago.

Thursday May 1, 12:30-1:45 pm, Luncheon Seminar Series
“Pragmatism, Sovereignty and Community in Modern Arab Political Thought,” by Ellis Goldberg

Ellis Goldberg teaches politics at the University of Washington. In seminal books such as /Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker/ (1986); /The Social History of Labor in the Middle East/ (1996); and /Trade, Reputation, and Child Labor in Twentieth-Century Egypt/ (2004) he has helped advance the social history of the modern Middle East. Other publications include work on Muslim political movements in Islam, the origins of the post-colonial trade union movement in Egypt, and human rights.