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2007-2008 MESALC Speaker Series |
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| Evelyne Accad |
Evelyne Accad will be presenting two public lectures at the University of Virginia:
"The Wounded Breast: A Patient's Cancer Journey"
Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 12:30-1:30 pm
Jordan Conference Center Auditorium
"Sexuality, War, and Literature in Lebanon"
Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 4:00-5:30 pm
Kaleidoscope Center, Newcomb Hall
Click here for more information about the talks.
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| Evelyne Accad was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1943. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1973. Professor Accad's research interests include contemporary literature, Arab women's contribution to literature, and Arab feminist writing; gender, war and non-violent alternatives; creative writing. She is also an accomplished song writer and musician, and has performed at numerous venues throughout the United States. (Link to more information about Accad.) |
| Asif Aslam Farrukhi |
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"Partition and Beyond: Cultural Legacies, Fictional Worlds"
Thursday, 18 October 2007, 3:30-5:00 pm
107 Clark Hall
Link to information about the talk. |
Asif Aslam Farrukhi is a medical doctor and a public health expert who works for UNICEF Pakistan. He is also one of the most prominent literary figures of his generation. He is a writer of Urdu and English prose and poetry, translator, literary critic, publisher (Scheherazade publications) and editor (foremost Urdu Literary journal, Dunyazad). He is the author of several original literary works and has been responsible for editing and translating selections from literature of other national languages of Pakistan into English and Urdu. As a literary critic and cultural commentator he has an astute understanding of Pakistan’s contemporary political and social life. His lectures in the US will consist of his writings on Pakistani culture, literature and politics.
Asif Farrukhi’s contribution to ongoing debates in Urdu literature and to the larger field of Pakistani literary trends is very important. Apart from the literary merit of his own fiction, he has been translating world literature from all corners of the globe into Urdu and publishing it either through his publishing house or in his journal Dunyazad. Simultaneously he has translated Pakistani literature into English and also published literary debates. The field of Pakistan studies in the US is still bereft to a large degree from the literary and cultural discussions within Pakistan. Generally the focus has been on the study of politics, history or anthropology. Asif Farrukhi’s contribution will seek to fill this gap. |
| Rina Williams |
"Cultures of the State: Women, Religion, and Rights in India’s Personal Laws"
Friday, 26 October 2007, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211
Click here for more information about the talks |
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Rina Verma Williams is currently the Interim Director of Studies in Women and Gender and the Associate Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. She received her A.M and Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, and B.A. (Political Science) and B.S. (Chemistry) from the University of California at Irvine. Her areas of specialization include culture and politics in South Asia; multiculturalism, religious laws and women's rights; and secularism, nationalism and ethnic conflict. Her book, Postcolonial Politics and Personal Laws: Colonial Legal Legacies and the Indian State, was published by Oxford University Press in 2006. Her current research examines how various forms of cultural identity (such as religion and nationality) have been constructed in gendered terms in Indian history and politics.
Her talk to MESALC will look at India’s personal laws as a form of multiculturalism that defines cultural and religious communities in and through the law. This negotiation of culture through the state works to shape the form and substance of culture itself. Ms. Williams will examine the role of the state in shaping culture by comparing the Hindu Code Bills of the 1950s and the Muslim Women Bill of the 1980s. Over time, state policies have contributed to a discourse that (inaccurately) constructs Hindu culture in India as progressive, reformist, and pro-women’s rights, and Muslim Indian culture as conservative, anti-reform, and oppressive of women. |
| Meir Shalev |
"Contemporary Israeli Literature: The Work of Meir Shalev in English Translation"
Tuesday, 13 November 2007, 5:30-6:30 pm
Special Collection Library
Click here for more information about Shalev's talk |
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| Israel’s most celebrated novelist, Meir Shalev was born in 1948 in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav. He is a bestselling author in Israel, Holland, and Germany, and he has been translated into over 20 languages. Now Shalev is making his impact felt on the American literary scene. His books include Fontanelle, Alone In the Desert, But A Few Days, and Esau. Russian Romance (The Blue Mountain) is one of the of the top 5 bestsellers in Israeli publishing history. Shalev’s writing is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez for his ability to “create worlds inhabited by the richness of invention and obsessiveness of dreams... He delivers both startling imagery and passionate, original characters whose destinies we follow through love, loss, laughter and death.” (The New York Times Book Review) |
| UVA South Asianists on Pakistan I: History, Prospects, and the Election |
Griffith Chaussee will moderate a panel discussion of Pakistan and the developments leading to the elections there. Given the US government's strategic involvement in Pakistan, the assassination in January of Benazir Bhutto, and the February 18th elections, there is much at stake in this part of South Asia. Come find out what three of U.Va.'s scholars on South Asia have to say on the matter, and contribute your own point of view.
Panelists:
- John Echeverri-Gent (Politics)
- Rina Williams (MESALC & SWAG)
- Arsalan Khan (Anthropology)
Friday, 15 February 2008, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211 |
| Mehr Farooqi |
"My Selections of Poems Gave Me a Bad Name: Anthologizing Modern Urdu Literature"
Friday, 14 March 2008, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211
Click here for more information about this talk.
Click here for more information about the speaker. |
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| Sara Roy |
The Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures joins with the Human Rights Program, the Islamic Legal Exchange, and the J.B. Moore Society of International Law in hosting
Dr. Sara Roy
Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies
who will be giving the following two lectures:
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"(Re)conceptualizing the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts"
Tuesday, 1 April 2008, 4:15-5:45 pm
Law School SL 294
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"Why Peace Failed?"
Wednesday, 2 April 2008, 11:00 am -1:00 pm
Cabell B-031
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| Click here for more information about the speaker. |
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| Bahiyyih Nakhjavani |
The Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures joins with the Studies in Women and Gender Program in hosting
Bahiyyih Nakhjavani
who will be giving the following two lectures
"Reading the Past to Write the Future: Iranian Facts and Fictions"
Tuesday, 8 April 2008, 12:00-1:00 pm
South Meeting Room, Newcomb Hall
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"Becoming a Presence: Persian Women Writers & Writing"
Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Cabell B-031
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| Click here for more information about the speaker. |
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| Neeti Nair |
" 'Unity Cannot Be Purchased at the Cost of Hindu Rights' : The Nation Debated as Hindu"
Friday, 11 April 2008, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211
Click here for more information about the speaker. |
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| Ayesha Siddiqa |
"The Argumentative Pakistani?"
Friday, 18 April 2008, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211
Link for information about the speaker
Link for information about Siddiqa's work |
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Abstract: Many project Pakistan as a failed state where democracy cannot survive. In the tradition of the Cold War, American policymakers and analysts still consider the military as the only institution which can save the country from collapse. But this is a country of 160 million people who have always fought back a rentier establishment for their right to have a political process and determine life according to their desires and not the agenda of the patron-client relationship between the US and Pakistan. The country's history is rife with conflict and multiple levels one being the fight between politics and Pakistan's establishment represented by the military. Will the people be able to push back the military which is extremely powerful and dominates life in Pakistan?
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| Fariba Zarinebaf |
"Ottoman
Cosmopolitanism: Constantinople in the 18th Century"
Friday, 25 April 2008, 3:00-5:00 pm
Shea House 211
Link for information about the speaker. |
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MESALC MOVIES at SHEA HOUSE - Spring 2008 |
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| Paradise Now |
MESALC Movies at the Shea House
presents
PARADISE NOW
Golden Globe, Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award Nomination
Best Foreign Language Film
In Arabic, with subtitles in English
For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Now |
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Come for a great movie, baklava, and discussion!
Free and open to all
Date: Thursday, April 24
Time: 7 pm to 9 pm
Location: Room 211, Shea House, 400 Monroe Lane
For more information contact:
Omima el-Araby ome3s@virginia.edu
Tarun Jain tj9d@virginia.edu
Series Sponsors
Department of the Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures
Shea Modern Language House
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