Roger Berkowitz addresses the audience at the annual conference of the
Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.
Photo by Karl Rabe
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 1, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Fun and Freedom: Gendered Agency in Indonesian Islamic Boarding Schools
Claire-Marie Hefner, PhD
Monday, December 4, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 This presentation analyzes the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centered on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. Moments of fun and leisure often theorized as challenging or at the margins of religious life. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that the ethnographic study of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviors that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. Based on two years of fieldwork and over a decade of follow up research, I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Islamic Hymns (ibtihalat) in the Digital Age: Public and Private Domains
Heba Arafa Abdelfattah, PhD
Thursday, December 7, 2023 4 pm
RKC 103 One of the most popular cultures in Islam is the genre of “hymns” or “invocations” (pl. ibtihalat, sing. ibtihal), which has recently been amplified on social media platforms. The ibtihalat are Arabic short poems performed by a sheikh known as the “supplicator” (mubtahil). They air regularly on Arabic TV stations and more frequently on radio stations, especially those broadcasting about the Qur’an, its recitation, and its interpretation. In Egypt, the Qur’an’s radio station, which has millions of followers, launched a YouTube station that airs ibtihalat before and after dawn prayer daily. The viewership of one ibtihal like that of Sheikh Sayyid al-Naqshabandi’s “My Lord” (Mawlay) reached 11 million on YouTube. The ibtihalat are also integral parts of Islamic festivities during the two Eids and Ramadan. Focusing on al-Naqshabandi’s ibtihal “My Lord” (Mawlay), this paper discusses the genre of Islamic hymns as a popular culture approach to study Islam as a lived experience based on the inclusion, not the elimination, of difference. To that end, I explore how the ibtihal becomes a domain for contemplating the place of the self in the present moment without the gaze of authority and how this reconfiguration of authority within the self has deep roots in the Islamic notion of “unicity of God” (tawhid). Heba Arafa Abdelfattah received her Ph.D. (2017) in Arabic and Islamic studies from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She recently served as a Postdoctoral fellow at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, and an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College. Her research brings the fields of religion, history, and popular culture into conversation.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Damascus Fijeh Water Supply and Hygienic Modernity Imperialism
Benan Grams, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Loyola University, New Orleans
Thursday, December 7, 2023 5:30 pm
Hegeman 204A Since the second half of the 19th century, there has been a global recognition of the crucial role of hygiene and clean water in combating diseases that historically plagued humanity. Sanitary water systems became integral to a worldwide movement aimed at enhancing public health and minimizing waterborne illnesses. The 1903 Fijeh Water Project in Damascus was an Ottoman measure initiated to elevate hygienic standards and improve public health within the Syrian province, particularly amidst recurrent cholera outbreaks. It constituted part of the Ottoman Empire's efforts to develop its public health sector. However, the funding challenges the project encountered and the diplomatic tensions it sparked underscore the political nature of public health. The case demonstrates how the Ottoman public health sector was subject to influences from hygienic modernity imperialism, intricately linked to global imperialist and capitalist endeavors of major powers. The Ottoman government's ability to sustain hygiene services in certain communities was contingent upon not conflicting with the capitalist interests of influential entities. The narrative of the Damascus Fijeh water project elucidates how the Ottomans' endeavors to modernize public health were undermined by the same powers that criticized their inadequate public health measures. Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 8, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Conversation: On France, Niger, Uranium, and Nuclear Power
Filmmaker Idrissou Mora-Kpai and Historian Carina Ray in Conversation on France, Niger, Uranium, and Nuclear Power
Sunday, December 10, 2023 1 pm
ZOOM
Mora-Kpai’s extraordinary “Arlit: Deuxième Paris,” described as a “a case study in environmental racism set in a uranium mining town in the Sahara Desert of Niger” will serve as springboard for a timely discussion on the history of France-Niger relations, nuclear power, and everyday life in the former French colony. The coup d’état of 2023 invites reflection on the imbrications of past in present, touching on policy, economy, environment, public health, and politics from the perspective of lived experience in the mining town.
Carina E. Ray, A.M. and H.P. Bentley Chair in African History and Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan. Author, Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Athens, OH, 2015); coeditor, Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan: A Critical Reader (Ithaca, 2019).
Idrissou Mora-Kpai, Guggenheim Fellow for Film & Video (2023), fellow at The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE. Assistant Professor, Department of Media Arts, Sciences and Studies, Ithaca College. Recent works include “America Street” (2020) and “Indochina – Traces of a Mother” (2011). See, https://idrimora.com/.
Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Center for Human Rights and the Arts; Dean of the College; French Studies Program; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Program; Science, Technology, and Society Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Medieval Islamic Cosmology and the Role of the Soul in Apprehending Musical Beauty
Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, PhD
Monday, December 11, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 How did medieval Muslims conceptualize science? What kind of a relationship did they envisage between science and other bodies of knowledge, chief among them Islam? This talk will provide some preliminary responses to these questions through a brief examination of a discussion within the science of music pertaining to the apprehension of musical beauty. First, a brief introduction to the cosmology of the medieval Islamic world will be provided. This will be followed by an examination of the question of musical beauty and the growing importance of the human soul in the discussions pertaining to this question. Inheriting the works of Classical Greek philosophers, scholars of music in the medieval Islamic world set about the task of explaining the mechanisms of apprehension of musical beauty according to mathematical rules. In this process, the role of the soul – a metaphysical being – as the link between humanity and the cosmos – with its mathematical underpinnings – grew in importance. Through this analysis we can see how medieval Muslims understood the world around them and how they conceptualized the bodies of knowledge that were tasked with studying the universe.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Impact of Migration and Migrant Remittances on Elders Left Behind: Case of Kyrgyzstan
Nurgul Ukueva (OSUN EDI Visiting Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor, American University of Central Asia)
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 The purpose of this research is to study the effect of migration and remittances on the health of elderly parents left behind using household survey panel data for Kyrgyzstan. Aging population is a significant global trend with important socio-economic implications worldwide. Kyrgyzstan is one of the top migrant-sending countries in the world with remittances comprising more than 30 percent of its GDP. The limited public pension benefits, dependence of elderly on household arrangements and support from adult children, while most children being labor migrants abroad makes Kyrgyzstan an important case study.
Theoretically, there are different channels through which migration and remittances could affect elderly and the overall impact is uncertain. On the one hand, remittances that households left behind could improve their standards of living, allowing for better nutrition, increased spending on health check-ups and access to better healthcare services, thus contributing positively to health outcomes of elders. On the other hand, with adult children working abroad, elderly parents may have to look after grandchildren, be involved in more housework and additional farm work. Elderly parents may lack physical and emotional support of their adult children and experience negative health consequences from migration of their children. Thus, the impact of migration and remittances on elderly health outcomes is ambiguous, demands empirical investigation. Sponsored by: Economics Program and OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Beyond Borders: Gendered Histories of Colonial and Postcolonial Race-Making in the Middle East and North Africa
Dahlia El Zein, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 5:30 pm
Hegeman 204A As a system of social differentiation in the Middle East and North Africa during colonialism and postcolonialism, race defied fixed categorizations, while also moving across time and space.This fluidity was exemplified by the increasing presence of Lebanese Syrians in colonial French West Africa (1895-1958) during French mandate rule (1920-1946) in the Levant. Although the economic prowess of this Levantine community in West Africa has been studied—emphasizing their role as an entrepreneurial trader class leveraging the colonial economy for upward mobility—the Lebanese Syrian diaspora in West Africa has been notably absent from histories of race-making under French colonialism, despite the enduring legacies of such processes in the Levant, broader Middle East, and North Africa.
In this talk, I discuss the main findings of my research, which traces the movement of Lebanese Syrians across the French empire in the early-to-mid 20th century. I show how racialization transformed as people moved from Beirut to Marseille to Dakar and back, influencing the shifting racial positionalities of this mobile group as well as those in the places through which they moved. Using diverse sources that include official documents, travelogues, memoirs, periodicals, family papers, cemeteries, and novels in Arabic, French, and English from Beirut, Dakar, and Paris, I argue that mobile processes of racialization were also gendered. Women faced the lion’s share of biopolitical regulation from French colonial authorities and Levantine and West African communities, while men became the visible face of this control as key bodies for the making of racialized subjects across the Empire and in the polities that would replace it. Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
What’s in a Leak?: The Struggle for Information Justice in the Modern Middle East
Chloe Bordewich, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Digital Humanities, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto
Thursday, December 14, 2023 5:30–6:30 pm
Hegeman 204A In the late 19th century, an explosion of communication technologies and mass media made it possible to transmit more information across greater distances than ever before. State authorities panicked as older forms of official secrecy frayed, and began developing new forms of information control. For citizens, urgent questions emerged: What did people have a right to know? What was the state entitled to conceal? In Cairo, Egypt, these questions burst into the public eye at the 1896 trial of a telegraph operator and a celebrity publisher who were accused of spreading a military leak. The watershed case exposed rising anti-colonial fervor, government officials’ inability to grasp technology, and profoundly different ideas of the public good. This episode demonstrates the urgency of studying information in its own right—its flow, its obstacles, its ephemeral forms. It also introduces a new lens for understanding the 20th-century Middle East that can help us explain the myths and silences that have haunted frustrated struggles for justice for over a century.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 15, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 22, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 1, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Fun and Freedom: Gendered Agency in Indonesian Islamic Boarding Schools
Claire-Marie Hefner, PhD
Monday, December 4, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 This presentation analyzes the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centered on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. Moments of fun and leisure often theorized as challenging or at the margins of religious life. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that the ethnographic study of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviors that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. Based on two years of fieldwork and over a decade of follow up research, I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Islamic Hymns (ibtihalat) in the Digital Age: Public and Private Domains
Heba Arafa Abdelfattah, PhD
Thursday, December 7, 2023 4 pm
RKC 103 One of the most popular cultures in Islam is the genre of “hymns” or “invocations” (pl. ibtihalat, sing. ibtihal), which has recently been amplified on social media platforms. The ibtihalat are Arabic short poems performed by a sheikh known as the “supplicator” (mubtahil). They air regularly on Arabic TV stations and more frequently on radio stations, especially those broadcasting about the Qur’an, its recitation, and its interpretation. In Egypt, the Qur’an’s radio station, which has millions of followers, launched a YouTube station that airs ibtihalat before and after dawn prayer daily. The viewership of one ibtihal like that of Sheikh Sayyid al-Naqshabandi’s “My Lord” (Mawlay) reached 11 million on YouTube. The ibtihalat are also integral parts of Islamic festivities during the two Eids and Ramadan. Focusing on al-Naqshabandi’s ibtihal “My Lord” (Mawlay), this paper discusses the genre of Islamic hymns as a popular culture approach to study Islam as a lived experience based on the inclusion, not the elimination, of difference. To that end, I explore how the ibtihal becomes a domain for contemplating the place of the self in the present moment without the gaze of authority and how this reconfiguration of authority within the self has deep roots in the Islamic notion of “unicity of God” (tawhid). Heba Arafa Abdelfattah received her Ph.D. (2017) in Arabic and Islamic studies from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She recently served as a Postdoctoral fellow at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, and an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College. Her research brings the fields of religion, history, and popular culture into conversation.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Damascus Fijeh Water Supply and Hygienic Modernity Imperialism
Benan Grams, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Loyola University, New Orleans
Thursday, December 7, 2023 5:30 pm
Hegeman 204A Since the second half of the 19th century, there has been a global recognition of the crucial role of hygiene and clean water in combating diseases that historically plagued humanity. Sanitary water systems became integral to a worldwide movement aimed at enhancing public health and minimizing waterborne illnesses. The 1903 Fijeh Water Project in Damascus was an Ottoman measure initiated to elevate hygienic standards and improve public health within the Syrian province, particularly amidst recurrent cholera outbreaks. It constituted part of the Ottoman Empire's efforts to develop its public health sector. However, the funding challenges the project encountered and the diplomatic tensions it sparked underscore the political nature of public health. The case demonstrates how the Ottoman public health sector was subject to influences from hygienic modernity imperialism, intricately linked to global imperialist and capitalist endeavors of major powers. The Ottoman government's ability to sustain hygiene services in certain communities was contingent upon not conflicting with the capitalist interests of influential entities. The narrative of the Damascus Fijeh water project elucidates how the Ottomans' endeavors to modernize public health were undermined by the same powers that criticized their inadequate public health measures. Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 8, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Conversation: On France, Niger, Uranium, and Nuclear Power
Filmmaker Idrissou Mora-Kpai and Historian Carina Ray in Conversation on France, Niger, Uranium, and Nuclear Power
Sunday, December 10, 2023 1 pm
ZOOM
Mora-Kpai’s extraordinary “Arlit: Deuxième Paris,” described as a “a case study in environmental racism set in a uranium mining town in the Sahara Desert of Niger” will serve as springboard for a timely discussion on the history of France-Niger relations, nuclear power, and everyday life in the former French colony. The coup d’état of 2023 invites reflection on the imbrications of past in present, touching on policy, economy, environment, public health, and politics from the perspective of lived experience in the mining town.
Carina E. Ray, A.M. and H.P. Bentley Chair in African History and Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan. Author, Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Athens, OH, 2015); coeditor, Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan: A Critical Reader (Ithaca, 2019).
Idrissou Mora-Kpai, Guggenheim Fellow for Film & Video (2023), fellow at The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE. Assistant Professor, Department of Media Arts, Sciences and Studies, Ithaca College. Recent works include “America Street” (2020) and “Indochina – Traces of a Mother” (2011). See, https://idrimora.com/.
Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Center for Human Rights and the Arts; Dean of the College; French Studies Program; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Program; Science, Technology, and Society Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Medieval Islamic Cosmology and the Role of the Soul in Apprehending Musical Beauty
Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, PhD
Monday, December 11, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 How did medieval Muslims conceptualize science? What kind of a relationship did they envisage between science and other bodies of knowledge, chief among them Islam? This talk will provide some preliminary responses to these questions through a brief examination of a discussion within the science of music pertaining to the apprehension of musical beauty. First, a brief introduction to the cosmology of the medieval Islamic world will be provided. This will be followed by an examination of the question of musical beauty and the growing importance of the human soul in the discussions pertaining to this question. Inheriting the works of Classical Greek philosophers, scholars of music in the medieval Islamic world set about the task of explaining the mechanisms of apprehension of musical beauty according to mathematical rules. In this process, the role of the soul – a metaphysical being – as the link between humanity and the cosmos – with its mathematical underpinnings – grew in importance. Through this analysis we can see how medieval Muslims understood the world around them and how they conceptualized the bodies of knowledge that were tasked with studying the universe.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Impact of Migration and Migrant Remittances on Elders Left Behind: Case of Kyrgyzstan
Nurgul Ukueva (OSUN EDI Visiting Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor, American University of Central Asia)
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 5 pm
Olin 102 The purpose of this research is to study the effect of migration and remittances on the health of elderly parents left behind using household survey panel data for Kyrgyzstan. Aging population is a significant global trend with important socio-economic implications worldwide. Kyrgyzstan is one of the top migrant-sending countries in the world with remittances comprising more than 30 percent of its GDP. The limited public pension benefits, dependence of elderly on household arrangements and support from adult children, while most children being labor migrants abroad makes Kyrgyzstan an important case study.
Theoretically, there are different channels through which migration and remittances could affect elderly and the overall impact is uncertain. On the one hand, remittances that households left behind could improve their standards of living, allowing for better nutrition, increased spending on health check-ups and access to better healthcare services, thus contributing positively to health outcomes of elders. On the other hand, with adult children working abroad, elderly parents may have to look after grandchildren, be involved in more housework and additional farm work. Elderly parents may lack physical and emotional support of their adult children and experience negative health consequences from migration of their children. Thus, the impact of migration and remittances on elderly health outcomes is ambiguous, demands empirical investigation. Sponsored by: Economics Program and OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Beyond Borders: Gendered Histories of Colonial and Postcolonial Race-Making in the Middle East and North Africa
Dahlia El Zein, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 5:30 pm
Hegeman 204A As a system of social differentiation in the Middle East and North Africa during colonialism and postcolonialism, race defied fixed categorizations, while also moving across time and space.This fluidity was exemplified by the increasing presence of Lebanese Syrians in colonial French West Africa (1895-1958) during French mandate rule (1920-1946) in the Levant. Although the economic prowess of this Levantine community in West Africa has been studied—emphasizing their role as an entrepreneurial trader class leveraging the colonial economy for upward mobility—the Lebanese Syrian diaspora in West Africa has been notably absent from histories of race-making under French colonialism, despite the enduring legacies of such processes in the Levant, broader Middle East, and North Africa.
In this talk, I discuss the main findings of my research, which traces the movement of Lebanese Syrians across the French empire in the early-to-mid 20th century. I show how racialization transformed as people moved from Beirut to Marseille to Dakar and back, influencing the shifting racial positionalities of this mobile group as well as those in the places through which they moved. Using diverse sources that include official documents, travelogues, memoirs, periodicals, family papers, cemeteries, and novels in Arabic, French, and English from Beirut, Dakar, and Paris, I argue that mobile processes of racialization were also gendered. Women faced the lion’s share of biopolitical regulation from French colonial authorities and Levantine and West African communities, while men became the visible face of this control as key bodies for the making of racialized subjects across the Empire and in the polities that would replace it. Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
What’s in a Leak?: The Struggle for Information Justice in the Modern Middle East
Chloe Bordewich, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Digital Humanities, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto
Thursday, December 14, 2023 5:30–6:30 pm
Hegeman 204A In the late 19th century, an explosion of communication technologies and mass media made it possible to transmit more information across greater distances than ever before. State authorities panicked as older forms of official secrecy frayed, and began developing new forms of information control. For citizens, urgent questions emerged: What did people have a right to know? What was the state entitled to conceal? In Cairo, Egypt, these questions burst into the public eye at the 1896 trial of a telegraph operator and a celebrity publisher who were accused of spreading a military leak. The watershed case exposed rising anti-colonial fervor, government officials’ inability to grasp technology, and profoundly different ideas of the public good. This episode demonstrates the urgency of studying information in its own right—its flow, its obstacles, its ephemeral forms. It also introduces a new lens for understanding the 20th-century Middle East that can help us explain the myths and silences that have haunted frustrated struggles for justice for over a century.Sponsored by: Dean of the College; Historical Studies Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 15, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Join Professors John Ryle (Bard Africana Studies Director) and Lloyd Hazvineyi (OSUN Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard)
Friday, December 22, 2023 12–2 pm
Kline College Room You are invited to the Africa Table on Friday, November 10 and subsequent Fridays in the College Room in Kline.
The Africa Table is an informal lunchtime gathering for students, staff, and faculty—those from African countries and those with an interest in the continent. All are welcome. No agenda; many languages. Bring your lunch and join us—every Friday til the end of term—between noon and 2 pm.
Looking forward to seeing you.Sponsored by: Africana Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
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