What can museums tell us about a nation’s self-image? How does Germany approach its colonial past in light of the Holocaust? Berlin’s national museums have become the focus of current debates around repatriation and colonial collections – most visibly those now housed inside the contested Humboldt Forum. But the Humboldt Forum is just the beginning. This talk moves beyond the ethnological collections inside the resurrected Prussian castle in the center of Berlin. It ties recent discussions to other, hitherto neglected sites, such as the seemingly unproblematic antiquity collections from the former Ottoman Empire on Berlin’s Museum Island, and collections of human remains from ‘German East Africa’ held in the storage facilities on the city’s periphery. How were all these collections entangled not only with each other but also with global networks of trade, material extraction and exploitative labour? In the late nineteenth century, these collections were furthermore exploited to consolidate triumphalist narratives of ‘Western civilization’ and human history – not least by providing the raw materials for a new form of ‘scientific’ antisemitism and racism that developed around 1900 onwards: with fatal consequences in the twentieth century. In spite of these problematic legacies, however, Berlin’s urban center still reflects an imperial mindset in the wake of an affirmative monumentalization of the Wilhelmine era. This tells us as much about race and memory politics in Germany today.

Following the lecture, Mirjam Brusius will be joined in conversation by Professor Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor of the History of the Arts of Islam (Columbia University). A reception will conclude the evening.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.  https://germanic.columbia.edu/events/skulls-sculptures-and-kaisers-museums

Mirjam S. Brusius is a cultural historian with a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and an MA from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Currently, Mirjam is a Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History at the German Historical Institute London.

Each year the annual Mosse Lecture, presented by the Columbia Department of Germanic Languages, seeks to honor the legacy of the progressive Mosse publishing house founded by Rudolf Mosse, which helped to shape the democratic public sphere during the German Weimar Republic. Descendants of the Mosse Family include Prof. George L Mosse, the acclaimed historian of fascism, Dr. Hilde L. Mosse, a distinguished child psychiatrist who worked with Harlem children suffering from reading disabilities, Hans Strauch, an accomplished architect, and Roger Strauch, a successful high technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Hans and Roger co-lead The Mosse Foundation’s efforts to sustain and promote the Mosse Family’s philanthropic legacy to support distinguished educational, research, health, and arts institutions and progressive causes.

Please join us for a special event celebrating Where Is Abbas Kiarostami?, the latest book by renowned scholar Hamid Dabashi, exploring the legacy of one of cinema’s greatest visionaries.

Featuring:

Hamid Dabashi, Author and Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature
Jane Gaines, Professor, Film and Media Studies, Columbia University; Professor Emerita of English & Literature, Duke University
Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author and Professor of Professional Practice in Comparative Literature and Translation at Barnard College.

Moderated by Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Film

Sponsored by:

Columbia University School of the Arts
Film Program
Film and Media Studies Program
Center for Comparative Media
Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS)

For more information, click here: https://www.lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/spring-2025-events/where-is-abbas-kiarostami-a-conversation-with-hamid-dabashi

SCREENING of Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

March 12, 2025 – 6:10 PM
Alfred Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Followed by a moderated discussion with Director Johan Grimonprez

RSVP (RSVP required 48 hours in advance for non-CU ID holders)

Trailer 

2025 Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature. United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate. 

Event link: https://sofheyman.org/events/not-your-usual-resistance

Habibe Jafarian and her translator, Salar Abdoh, will discuss the advent of the contemporary personal essay form in Iran, its relation to the larger direction of her work as an editor and biographer, and the politics of its translation. This event will be conducted in conversation with Professor Mana Kia and focus on how Jafarian’s work articulates the experiences and perspectives of a professional woman in Iran that are often in contrast to usual representations in English.

This event is part of the Against the Grain: Gender and the Fraught Politics of Translation in Persophone World series. These spring events are themed, “In Their Own Words: Iranian Lives and the Personal Essay.” Learn more about the series here.

Friday, March 7, 2025, 12:00 pm EST | In person at the Heyman Center and via Zoom

Registration required 

CU/BC ID holders must also register in advance

Co-sponsored by Heyman Center Fellows, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Middle East Institute, and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies

We are excited to invite you to our next MESAAS Visiting Artist Series events. This series invites artists from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa to share their work through open discussions, screenings, and workshops. Join us for these special opportunities to engage with the artists’ practices and their insights into the social and political contexts shaping their work.

We are excited to invite you to our next MESAAS Visiting Artist Series event. This series invites artists from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa to share their work through open discussions, screenings, and workshops. Join us for these special opportunities to engage with the artists’ practices and their insights into the social and political contexts shaping their work.

Join us for a conversation with Yasi Alipour, an Iranian artist/writer whose tactile works on paper use folding to explore mathematics as a language, with all the historical, social, political, and embodied ramifications any language holds. In her writing, research, and pedagogical approach, Alipour focuses on intergenerational conversations that happen through and within histories of erasure. Alipour currently lives in Brooklyn and wonders about paper, counting, and silence.

RSVP here

December 4 – Screening & Artist Talk with Tali Keren

4:00-6:00 PM
403 Knox Hall

Please join us for the screening of Un-Charting (2023) by Tali Keren, followed by an open discussion with MESAAS Chair Gil Hochberg. Part of a trilogy, this film critically examines the settler-colonial imagination, tracing connections between conservative American Evangelism, British imperialism, and Zionism. Layering historical sources and contemporary documentary footage, Un-Charting examines the ideological imbrication – past and present – of conservative American Evangelism, British imperialism, and Zionism. The project investigates how messianic myths travel across time and geography, manifesting in state-sanctioned violence and attempts at Palestinian erasure.  While the work pre-dates October 7, it reveals part of the genocidal mechanisms we are witnessing in Gaza today. The work aims to uncover the complexities of the connection between the US and Israel that extend beyond political alliances into the belief systems and rituals of the American Christian right.

RSVP here

We look forward to seeing you there,

MESAAS, Columbia University

November 20 – Artist Talk with Ibrahim Mahama

3:00-5:00 PM
403 Knox Hall

Join us for a conversation with Ibrahim Mahama, an artist known for his innovative, community-driven installations using recycled textiles and found objects to explore the social histories embedded within these materials. Mahama’s collaborative practice involves transforming these items with local communities, reinvesting proceeds from his work to create interdisciplinary cultural institutions in his hometown of Tamale, Ghana, promoting cultural renewal through a sustainable, circular economy.

RSVP here

The New York Kurdish Film Festival, established in 2017, takes place every fall over several days. In recent years, the festival’s venue has been the landmark theater Village East by Angelika, located in Manhattan’s East Village.

The festival’s program typically features a mix of short and feature-length films, dramas, documentaries, and animations, from diverse regions of Kurdistan. The films’ directors may be either Kurdish or non-Kurdish. Many of the films have their American premieres here.

For more information and locations of specific screenings and discussions, click here: New York Kurdish Film Festival

The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University is pleased to announce its annual Graduate Student Conference to be held on April 18-19 2024. This conference is a space for graduate students to present their original work in a welcoming and stimulating environment.

Our conference this year aims to investigate the Extra/ordinary as a category and rhetoric of socio political, historical and cultural thought. What makes a particular event, invention, time, war, crisis, or phenomenon extraordinary? On the contrary, what is relegated to the realm of the ordinary? During a time of multiple compounding crises, where must we look, focus and thoughtfully respond? Is it helpful to highlight the multiplicity of crises or is our crisis-ridden world best understood through an overarching analytical framework?

We welcome a wide range of submissions that speak to our general theme and encourage (but do not seek to limit) interpretations of the Extra/Ordinary as mentioned in our Call for Papers. You can keep updated about the conference on our website: https://mesaasgraduateconference.wordpress.com. For any questions or inquiries, please contact mesaasgraduateconference@gmail.com.

“What Lies Between: A Celebration of Translation and Collaboration”

Upon the publication of Aftab Ahmad’s Urdu translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Hindi novel Ret Samadhi (Tomb of Sand).

Featuring Aftab Ahmad (MESAAS); and Daisy Rockwell and Geetanjali Shree, co-winners of 2022 International Booker Prize

Moderated by Isabel Huacuja Alonso (Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies)

Time:  4:15pm – 6:00pm

Location:   James Room, 4th floor, Barnard Hall, Barnard College entrance at 118th Street and Broadway

In person only.

REGISTER HERE

Co-sponsored by the Barnard College Translation Studies Program, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, the Literary Translation Program at the School of the Arts, the South Asia Institute, and the Society of Fellows and the Heyman Institute for the Humanities

Painting by Lapata.

Aftab Ahmad is a Senior Language Lecturer in Hindi and Urdu in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.  He earned his BA at Aligarh Muslim University and an MA and PhD at Jawaharlal University.  His publications include translations from Urdu (with Matt Reeck) of Mirages of the Mind  (Aab-e-gum) by Mushtaque Ahmad Yusufi (2015), and Bombay Stories by Saadat Hasan Mano (2012).

Daisy Rockwell is a painter and award-winning translator of Hindi and Urdu literature. She paints under the takhallus, or alias, Lapata (pronounced ‘laapataa’), which is Urdu for “missing,” or “absconded.”. She earned a PhD in South Asian literature at the University of Chicago. Rockwell has published numerous translations from Hindi and Urdu, including Upendranath Ashk’s Falling Walls (2015) and his Hats and Doctors (2013), Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (2016), and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat here, a Gujarat there (2019) was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2019. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (2021) won the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Other works by Rockwell include Upendranath Ashk: A Critical Biography (2004); The Little Book of Terror, a volume of paintings and essays on the Global War on Terror (2012); and her novel Taste, published by Foxhead Books in 2014.

Geetanjali Shree is a novelist and short-story writer based in New Delhi, India. She is the author of several short stories and five novels. Her 2000 novel Mai was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2001. In 2022, her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi (2018), translated into English as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize. Her other novels include Hamara Shahar Us Baras (1998); Tirohit (2001) [published in English as The Roof Beneath Her Feet (2013)]; Khali Jagah (2006) [published asThe Empty Space (2011)]. Aside from fiction, she has written the critical biography Between Two Worlds: An Intellectual Biography of Premchand (1989).

This three-day conference will bring together activists, theorists, artists, and writers to explore the pasts, futures, and in-between times of transgender lives, narratives, and theories. The conference will allow an opportunity to meet, talk, learn, and disrupt the conventional narratives that circulate about bodies, economies, histories, pleasure, revolt, and science.