Book Launch

After The Ottomans: Genocide’s Long Shadow and Armenian Resilience

Featuring co-editors:

Hans-Lukas Kieser (Newcastle University, Australia)

Seyhan Bayraktar (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Khatchig Mouradian (Columbia University, USA)

Time: Monday, Sept. 25 at 6pm

Place: CSSW, Room C03, Columbia University

Address: 1255 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY, New York, NY 10027

Cosponsors:

MESAAS

Institute for the Study of Human Rights,

Columbia University Armenian Center

Book description:

This book deals with the lasting impact and the formative legacy of removal, dispossession and the politics of genocide in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire. For understanding contemporary Turkey and the neighboring region, it is important to revisit the massive transformation of the late-Ottoman world caused by persistent warfare between 1912 and 1922.

This fourth volume of a series focusing on the “Ottoman Cataclysm” looks at the century-long consequences and persistent implications of the Armenian genocide. It deals with the actions and words of the Armenians as they grappled with total destruction and tried to emerge from under it. Eleven scholars of history, anthropology, literature and political science explore the Ottoman Armenians not only as the major victims of the First World War and the post-war treaties, but also as agents striving for survival, writing history, transmitting the memory and searching for justice.

This symposium celebrates the launch of two new anthologies on South Asian photography and cinema. Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia (Alkazi Foundation for the Arts & HarperCollins Publishers India) and Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema (Alkazi Collection of Photography & Mapin Publishing) provoke a renewed look at questions of artistic practice and its relations to collaborative worldmaking, knowledge production, and archival memory.

Join our esteemed panel of speakers–artists, scholars, curators, and filmmakers-as they discuss the histories and futures of lens-based practice in and on South Asia.

SPEAKERS

Annu Palakunnathu

Matthew

Bakirathi Mani

Chitra Ganesh lIftikhar Dadi

Noam MElcott

Sudhir Mahadevan

Closing remarks Mira Nai

MODERATORS/Book Editors

Debashree Mukherjee, Columbia University

Rahaab Allana, Alkazi Foundation

For more information click here: https://mesaasgraduateconference.wordpress.com/

The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University is pleased to announce its annual Graduate Student Conference on the 20th and 21st of April, 2023. This conference is a space for graduate scholars, activists, artists, and others to think through and confront colonial systems.

The conference this year is interested in “Decolonizing Cartographies” – or, stated broadly, how do we challenge colonial regimes of knowledge and the ways they divide the world?

In order to pursue these questions, we must also ask what ‘decoloniality’ means and looks like across various settings: academic, artistic, practical, etc. In what ways does the decolonial contrast with the anti-colonial, what does each position offer, and what possibilities are opened and foreclosed by reorienting from one to the other?

For example, cartography as science and practice implies a focus on issues of knowledge production while at the same time involving acts of representation. Humanistic and social scientific practice, more broadly, especially within the university, continues to operate out of an epistemology that complicates efforts to decolonize it. How can we shift our pedagogy and practice to begin producing decolonial knowledge and engendering decolonial practice?

We encourage papers and presentations which speak to our theme. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Human Geography

• Technopolitics & Expert Knowledge

• Alternative Lifeworlds

• Racialization

• Colonial gendering

• (Re)presentation

• Textual Landscapes

• Translation

• Non-Modern Epistemologies and Ontologies

• Peripheries

• Critical Ecologies

• Decolonial Aesthetics

• Critical Approaches to Sexuality

• Transnational Cinema and Media

• Colonial and Decolonial Temporalities

• Settlement/Unsettlement

• Conceiving Ruptures & Continuities

This is a hybrid conference. This conference will be held predominately on Zoom, with some in-person components for those in the New York City area.

They should be no longer than 350 – 400 words. Please include a short biography of no more than 100 words in your submission. Notification of paper acceptance will be sent by mid-March. Your final papers should be submitted by April 10th. You can follow the conference on our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/MESAAS_GSA

Please direct any questions to the following email: mesaasgraduateconference@ gmail.com

This interdisciplinary conference brings together doctoral students and scholars working on issues related to urbanism and the production of space in Middle Eastern and North African cities. We believe that the panels and paper presentations throughout the conference will be of interest to your students and faculty.

Register here:  Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research, Ongoing Debates, and Next Directions

Wednesday, November 9, at 5:15pmHeyman Center for the Humanities, 2nd Floor Common Room

Featuring:

Marcos Balter, Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition, Department of Music

Subhashini Kaligotla, Barbara Stoler Miller Associate Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, AHAR

Lu Kou, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Alison Vacca, Gevork M. Avedissian Associate Professor of Armenian History and Civilization, MESAAS

Moderated by:

Sarah Cole, Dean of Humanities and Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Please join Division of Humanities Dean Sarah Cole in welcoming our newest colleagues from across the division.

Hosted by the Division of Humanities in the Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the New Humanities Faculty Salons are an opportunity to meet new faculty members as they join the Columbia Humanities community.  Learn about their current work while you enjoy conversation, drinks, and snacks with faculty and graduate students.  By bringing together scholars from across the Division, we hope to open conversations across the wider Humanities community.

All salons will be held at the Society of Fellows / Heyman Center for the Humanities, in the Common Room on the second floor.

Faculty and graduate students from all divisions are welcome to attend.  Wine and snacks will be served.  Events are 100% in-person.