"Middle Eastern Art" in Translation: A Conversation with Critics, Artists, and Curators

Friday, September 25, 2009 | 12:30pm - 4:00pm
Location: The Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South (at 255 Sullivan Street)

The groundbreaking exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art, Tarjama/Translation, maps an influential subset of recent work from the Middle East and Central Asia and its diasporas as a complex and dynamic translational undertaking. Rather than highlighting the region as its main thematic or providing a panoramic, and thus fleeting, exposure to “Middle Eastern art,” Tarjama/Translation focuses on the common yet complex theme of cultural, artistic and critical translation. The artists featured in the exhibit scrutinize culture, society, belief, criteria, science, and everyday phenomena as material for translation: they read between the lines, probe the obvious, and burrow through the camouflage of appearances to contemplate cultural specificity and universal relevance. On the occasion of the exhibit's closing, a special panel moderated by Jessica Winegar (Northwestern University) will examine the challenges and interventions of the exhibit and its implications for the contemporary art world. Hosted by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU, ArteEast, and the Center for Religion and Media at NYU.  A light lunch will be provided.

A Cinema Across Borders: The First New York Kurdish Film Festival
October 21-25, 2009
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 E. 8th street, New York, NY

For a complete schedule of screenings and events, see www.arteeast.org 

Kurdish cinema speaks strongly to our times because it confronts the pain and promise of crossing borders: not only the borders that separate nations, but the lines that define gender, community, and culture, that demarcate the past and the future, and adjudicate between those with and those without hope. Yet despite being one of the great film cultures of the world, Kurdish cinema still remains largely unknown in the U.S.  The First New York Kurdish Film Festival: A Cinema Across Borders will showcase an exciting range of recent feature films, shorts, and documentaries by male and female directors from across the Kurdish region—including films from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia—and the Kurdish diaspora. What unites these diverse films is a powerful commitment to innovative storytelling and a concern to rethink imposed borders of whatever kind. The festival will bring a number of Kurdish film directors to the U.S. to connect directly with New York audiences, and will provide a unique educational opportunity for learning about Kurdish history and culture. The festival aims to enrich the diversity and cultural life of the city by opening up new routes for understanding and dialogue between different cultures and visions of the world.

The First New York Kurdish Film Festival: A Cinema Across Borders is directed by an independent organizing committee and is supported by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU and ArteEast.  Cosponsored by the Center for Religion and Media at NYU.

The NYU Kevorkian Center, AMEJA & The Make Agency Presents:

Iran: What You Need to Know - A Teach-In
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | 6:30pm - 9:30pm
Location: Cantor Center, 36 E. 8th street

The recent events in Iran have left many of us with questions.  Why are there demonstrations and violence in the streets of Iran?
How are the events there relevant to us here? What is our role here in the US and how can we support the people of Iran in this time of
turmoil?

A EVENING TEACH-IN IS TAKING PLACE for journalists, students, academics, and any one interested in gaining a better understanding of the incredible images and stories emerging from Iran over the past week. We will have eyewitness accounts from people who have just returned from Iran and reports from journalists who have been covering Iran for the past few years.

SPEAKERS:
Arang Keshavarzian is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle
Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He has just
returned from Iran, where he spent the last three weeks following the
election campaign and its immediate aftermath and he will give an
eyewitness account of the events there.

Golnoush Niknejad is the editor and founder of Tehran Bureau
(www.tehranbureau.com), an online magazine launched this year. Tehran
Bureau carried out extensive coverage of the recent Presidential
elections and now continues to overcome the Iranian government filters
and has become one of the main news sources from within Iran

Kouross Esmaeli is an Iranian-American independent journalist and
filmmaker working with Big Noise Film collective. He has been
reporting from Iran for the past four years for Aljazeera English,
Press TV and Current TV. He is also a member of Arab and Middle
Eastern Journalists Association.

Sponsored by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University & the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalist Association & The Make Agency

Email: IranTeachIn@hotmail.com

The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies &
The Program in Ottoman Studies at New York University
with Light Millennium

present

SUMMER’S END
(YAZSONU)

---

A CONVERSATION WITH ACCLAIMED NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT
ADALET AĞAOĞLU
Originally published in Turkish in 1980 and translated into English in 2008 by Figen Bingül, Summer’s End (Yazsonu) is one of acclaimed and prolific author Adalet Ağaoğlu’s most celebrated works. Since the early 1970s, she has published eight novels, several plays, three short story collections, two memoirs, including one which she describes as a memoir-novel, a book of dreams, and numerous essays.  Summer’s End is narrated by an author on vacation among the classical ruins of the ancient city of Side on the Mediterranean coast in Turkey, providing an intricate picture of a large cross-section of modern Turkish society. The novel offers a complex multi-dimensional and multi-leveled view of cultural values, politics, sexuality, and personal dilemmas.  Translation and discussion moderated by Sibel Erol (Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU)

Friday, May 1, 2009
12:30pm-1:45pm
Lunch will be provided

The Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South at Sullivan Street

 

Program in Ottoman Studies

ELIAS KOLOVOS, “THE MONKS OF MOUNT ATHOS AND THE OTTOMAN SULTANS”
Thursday, April 2, 2009 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Elias Kolovos is currently a visiting fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.  His work sheds light on the history of monasteries under Ottoman administration, Ottoman peasant history, and island societies in the Ottoman Empire (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries).

Seminar Series

JÜRGEN TODENHÖFER, “WHY DO YOU KILL? THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE IRAQI RESISTANCE”
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: 19 University Place, Room 102

Dr. Todenhöfer was a member of the German parliament for 18 years and spokesman for the CDU/CSU on development aid and arms control. For 50 years he has traveled extensively in the Middle East.  His latest book describes in harrowing detail the full impact of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on daily life in the Muslim world. Cosponsored with the Department of Media, Culture and Communication.

Luncheon Seminar Series

MONA ELTAHAWY, “BLOGS, SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND THE NEW, NEW MEDIA IN THE ARAB WORLD: GIVING A VOICE TO THE VOICELESS"
Thursday, April 9, 2009 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning syndicated columnist whose essays appear regularly in both the western and Arab press.  Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms. Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported from the region for The Guardian and U.S. News and World Report. Cosponsored with ArteEast.

Panel Discussion

“OIL, ECONOMY AND POLITICS IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST”
Monday, April 13, 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

TIMOTHY MITCHELL, Columbia University, studies the political economy of the Middle East, the political role of economics and other forms of expert knowledge, the politics of large-scale technical systems, and the place of colonialism in the making of modernity.  His most recent publication is Rule of Experts:  Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity.

ROBERT MABRO is Visiting Scholar, NYU, Oxford Fellow, and former director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.  His wide-ranging expertise in the field of oil is well-documented in his numerous publications, the most recent of which is Oil in the 21st Century.

Research Workshop

BESHARA DOUMANI, “BETWEEN KIN AND COURT: GENDER, PROPERTY AND THE PRAXIS OF ISLAMIC LAW"
Monday, April 20, 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, Doumani specializes in the social and cultural history of peasants, merchants, artisans, and women who lived in the provincial regions of the Arab East during the late Ottoman period (18th and 19th centuries). His work paints a live portrait of everyday life through studying family history, the political economy of urban-rural relations, and connections between gender and property.  Discussants:  Christine Philliou (History, Columbia University) and Michael Gilsenan (Anthropology, New York University)

Note:  All workshop participants must read the paper beforehand.  Copies are available in the Ettinghausen Library or by emailing Sarah Coffey at sc145@nyu.edu

Luncheon Seminar Series

JOHN RYLE, “THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AND THE PURSUIT OF PEACE AND JUSTICE IN SUDAN"
Thursday, April 23, 2009 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm

John Ryle is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Rift Valley Institute at Bard College.  A writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist, his work broadly focuses on Africana Studies and Human Rights. He is a former member of the International Eminent Persons Group, whose report on slavery and abduction in Sudan was published in 2002; his editorial pieces on the Sudan, among other topics, have wide readership.

Luncheon Seminar Series

ROBERT MABRO,  “THE EGYPTIAN VERSUS THE COSMOPOLITAN ALEXANDRIA"
Thursday, April 30, 2009 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Robert Mabro of Oxford will discuss two contrasting stories of the city of his youth and early career.  While the Cosmopolitan Alexandria captured the imagination of the West, of those who read or heard of Cavafy, Durrell and Forster, the Egyptian Alexandria quietly supplied workers to industry, commerce, and civil service, later influencing nationalist struggles for independence.

Ottoman Studies Panel Discussion

“THUGS AND PASHAS: HOUSEHOLDS AND THE POLITICS OF OTTOMAN REFORM IN CAIRO AND ISTANBUL, 1800-1850”
Monday, March 2, 2009 | 4:00pm-6:00pm

• Virginia Aksan (McMaster University), "Husrev Pasha (d. 1855): The Man Behind Mahmud II's Reforms."
• Khaled Fahmy (NYU), "Mehmed Ali: From Thuggery to International Statemanship.”

Visual Culture Series

“WOMEN IN PRISON: CINEMATIC TESTIMONIES FROM TURKEY AND IRAN”
Thursday, March 5, 2009 | 8:00pm-10:30pm

“From Scream to Scream” (Documentary, Iran, 2004, 30 minutes)
“Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite” (Feature, Turkey, 1989, 90 minutes)

Filmmakers PanteA Bahrami and Feride Çiçekoglu will introduce and discuss their groundbreaking films that analyze women’s experiences as political prisoners in the Middle East. Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Herstory Month at NYU.

Literary Conference

“PRISON, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLITICS”
Friday-Saturday, March 6-7, 2009

Friday Location: NYU, King Juan Carlos Building, 53 Washington Square South
Saturday Location: The New School, Wollman Hall, 66 West 12th Street
A literary conference featuring the following writers, critics and filmmakers

• Sinan Antoon
• Fadhil Al-Azzawi
• Livia Alexander
• Ammiel Alcalay
• Banu Bargu
• Fatna El Bouih
• PanteA Bahrami
• Monireh Baradaran 
• Feride Çiçekoglu
• Miriam cooke
• Alex Elinson
• Sabry Hafez
• Barbara Harlow
• Sonallah Ibrahim
• Mehdi Khorrami
• Elias Khoury
• Shahriar Mandanipour
• Esmail Nashif
• Susan Slyomovics
• Shareah Taleghani

Hosted by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU, the Eugene Lang College at the New School for Liberal Arts, and ArteEast (www.arteeast.org).  For more information and a complete schedule, contact Kevorkian.center@nyu.edu

CONCERT

NOUR MIDDLE EAST FOLK ENSEMBLE CONCERT: "FROM IRENE TO ISHTAR”
Sunday, March 8, 2009 | 4:30pm
Location: Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South, Eisner Lubin Hall

A benefit concert featuring the polyglot musical band NOUR (Divine Light in Arabic, Pomegranate in Armenian). The band covers folk and/or songs composed in the folk tradition from Balkans to the Gulf including (in alphabetic order) Arabic,  Armenian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Greek, Kurdish, Ladino, Persian and Turkish songs.

Purchase tickets at Kimmel Center’s Ticket Central, purchase online through NYU Home/NYU Life/Ticket Center, or email nourmusic@gmail.com. Cosponsored with the NYU Anatolian Culture Club.

Visual Culture Series

“FILM SCREENING: DISHING DEMOCRACY (2007, 50 minutes)”
Monday, March 9, 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Dishing Democracy goes behind the scenes at Arab television channel MBC in Cairo for an inside look at the hit all-female talk show, Kalam Nawaem. The film provides a nuanced portrait of four Arab women harnessing the power of transnational satellite TV to boldly and effectively push social reform. With exclusive access to both the private and the professional lives of the hosts and producers, the cameras capture censorship discussions, tension and camaraderie in the dressing room, and viewer reactions on the Arab street. Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Herstory Month at NYU.

Special Panel Discussion

“HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM IN IRAN: A CONVERSATION WITH WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS”
Monday, March 12, 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

A group of prominent women activists from Iran will describe their work, their victories and their challenges in promoting human rights in Iran today. Moderated by Hadi Ghaemi, Director, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Herstory Month at NYU.

Luncheon Seminar Series

NAJWA ADRA, "THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF DANCE IN THE ARABIAN PENINSULA: WOMEN, CULTURE AND PRIVATE/PUBLIC SPACE IN YEMEN”
Thursday, March 26, 2009 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Dr. Najwa Adra has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Yemen since the late 1970s.   In addition to the anthropology of dance, her research topics include tribal identity and customary law, the impacts of television on a rural community, women’s oral poetry, reproductive health, and women’s roles in agriculture. Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Herstory Month at NYU.

Research Workshop

HOMA HOODFAR, “RELIGIOUS IDIOMS AND RIGHTS-BASED DEMANDS: CAN IRANIAN WOMEN ACT AS AGENTS OF A REFORMATION OF SHIA ISLAM?”
Monday, March 30, 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Homa Hoodfar is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. Author of Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo, Professor Hoodfar’s interests span the broad fields of development, human rights and gender issues in Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Diane Singerman, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the American University, author of Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo will serve as discussant.Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Herstory Month at NYU. 

 Participants in the Kevorkian Center Research Workshop must read the paper in advance.  Papers may be obtained by emailing Kevorkian.center@nyu.edu.

Womenomics: Women, Microfinance, and Cultural Development

Presented by WHM, The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, Oxfam America @ NYU, Panhellenic Council and Asian American Women’s Alliance

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 | 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Shorin Performance Studio, Kimmel 802

Join us as we discuss the importance of women in economic and cultural development, particularly in developing countries. Panelists include representatives from Women for Women International and the Financial Access Initiative. After the panel, we will be holding a shopping dinner party featuring foods and products that are created by New York based collectives and non-profit organizations.