Monday, February 15, 2010

State of the Art: Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa , UCLA International Institute


The link between the ideology of power and knowledge production about the Middle East/North Africa is a potent, generative and creative one. Our conference aim is to tap the most recent contributions to the field of the anthropology of the region and to highlight collaborative research that recognizes the potential of ethnographic methodologies as a powerful catalyst for theoretical debate. We will examine a wide range of theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches that emerge at the intersection of scholarship and a larger discourse of power analytics.
Topics might include, but are not limited to: Islam and secularism; colonialism and postcoloniality; problems of modernity and the limits of theory; gender and sexuality; media and globalization; nation building; war and occupation.
This conference poses the following questions: Has academic scholarship on the Middle East/North Africa been successful in resisting the appropriation of knowledge by hegemonic dominance? How is decolonization of knowledge possible? What are the limits of critique? And, what are the possibilities and directions that novel theoretical imperatives can take to transform the face of the anthropology of the Middle East/North Africa?

Please circulate our conference invitation to your colleagues. The conference will be open to the public.
April 1-2, 2010
Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES), UCLALos Angeles, California
Co-organizers:
Sherine Hafez, University of California, Riverside (sherine.hafez@ucr.edu)
Susan Slyomovics, University of California, Los Angeles (ssly@anthro.ucla.edu)
For more info please contact:
Amy Bruinooge
310-825-1181
Dr. Pamela Chrabieh Badine and Charlotte Karagheuzian will present a paper on Middle Eastern bloggers during this conference. Details will be published later.

2 comments:

Karim said...

Great initiative! Congratulations!

Anonymous said...

Oui, probablement il est donc