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	Spring 2009
	Fall 2008
	Spring 2008
	Fall 2007

>>Spring 2009

Art, the Archive, Opera, and the Purge
with William Kentridge in conversation with David Levin
Tues., March 3, 2009 :: 7:30pm :: 501 Schermerhorn

From Gogol's short story of a body divided against itself, and the archive of Stalin's purges comes William Kentridge's magical rendition of Shostakovich's opera, The Nose. Anticipating the 2010 Metropolitan Opera production, world-renowned artist William Kentridge will screen film and other visual material, and discuss his art and aims with opera scholar and dramaturge David Levin.  Co-sponsored by the Engendering Archives working group of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference.

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Meyda Yeğenoğlu and Mahmut Mutman
Thurs., March 26, 2009 :: 1-3pm :: Heyman Center board room

Meyda Yeğenoğlu (Middle East Technical University)
"Sacralized Secularism and Hostile Hospitality in Europe"
with response by Gil Anidjar (MEALAC, Columbia University)

Mahmut Mutman (Bilkent University)
"The Carriage Affair, or the Birth of a National Hero"
with response by Hamid Dabashi (MEALAC, Columbia University)

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Margaret Garner and the Daughters of Ishmael
with Toni Morrison, Assia Djebar, Angela Davis, Leila Ahmed
Sat., March 28, 2009 :: 8:00pm :: Miller Theatre, Columbia University

Global Cultural Studies presents extracts from Toni Morrison's Margaret Garner and Assia Djebar's The Daughters of Ishmael. The performance will be accompanied by a discussion with Morrison, Djebar, Leila Ahmed (Harvard Divinity School), Richard Danielpour (Manhattan School of Music), Angela Davis (University of California, Santa Cruz), Gina Dent (UCSC), Clarisse Zimra (Southern Illinois University), and the performers, opening questions of feminism, femininity, slavery, and Islam. The event will be moderated by University Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Toni Morrison's opera Margaret Garner is based on the historical record, revisiting the events that inspired her 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved. We will couple extracts from Morrison's opera with extracts from Assia Djebar's The Daughters of Ishmael. Djebar has long been fascinated with the figure of Fatima, the Prophet Mohammed's daughter. In The Daughters, she relies on Arab chronicles to dramatize Fatima's role immediately after the Prophet's death. What would the future of Islam have been if this spirited daughter could have inherited the prophetship? Daring to imagine the past otherwise, these two ambitious compositions place the lives of women at the center stage of history.

The opera performance features: William Barto Jones (pianist, New York City Opera), Tracie Luck, Michael Mayes, Leonard Rowe, Maria Nadotti, Maria Grazia Mandruzzato, Silvia Gallerano, and DeAndre Simmons.

The event is co-sponsored by the Sterling Currier Fund, the Columbia University Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, the Caliban Foundation, the Columbia University Arts Initiative, the Pinnacle Group, Columbia University's School of the Arts, the Consulate General of France, and the Columbia University Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

Tickets for Margaret Garner and The Daughters of Ishmael can be purchased via credit card online at www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7083555 or by visiting the TIC box office in the lobby of Lerner Hall on the Columbia University campus at 2920 Broadway at 115th Street. Box office hours are Monday 3-8 p.m., Tuesday-Friday 1-8 p.m., and Saturday 3-10 p.m. Tickets will also be available at the door one hour prior to the performance (cash only). All seating is general admission. For general inquiries, contact inr2101 at columbia.edu.

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The French Color Line in Postcolonial France: From Zidane to Abd al Malik
a talk by Nacira Guénif-Souilamas
April 16, 2009 :: Maison Française, Columbia University

Until early 2000, France appeared to be protected from racial unrest by an abstract shield of universalism; however, long-standing inequalities have weakened this defense and left French society stunned in the face of a rapidly evolving ethnic and racial landscape.  Encompassing glamorous personae such as Zidane or celebrated rapper Abd al Malik as well as anonymous individuals traveling from remote housing projects to city centers where they are not welcome, this description of ethno-gendered snapshots will endeavor to explore a society still searching for ways to blur and eventually erase the color line inherited from its former colonial empire.

Nacira Guénif-Souilamas is currently a visiting Fulbright fellow at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as in the Departments of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) and Religion at Columbia University for the Spring of 2009. Her most recent projects include, "Zidane, portrait of the artist as a political avatar", in Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Postcolonial Strategies of Containment in Contemporary France; "Immigration without Integration and Vice-Versa", in Migration und Menschenrechte in Europa; "Beur, beurette, garçon arabe: une mythologie nationale?" in Dictionnaire du racisme et des discriminations; "The Republican Iconography of Colorful 'Marianne'" in Who is Afraid of Colored Television?; and "The Other French Exception: Virtuous Racism andthe War of the Sexes in Postcolonial France" in French Politics, Culture and Society (2006).

This event is made possible with the help of the department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC).  This seminar is free and open to the public.  No RSVP is required. 

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Travel, Boundaries and Sojourns through the Unfamiliar:
The 2009 ICLS Graduate Student Conference
April 17-19, 2009 :: Maison Française, Columbia University

Introductory remarks: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia)
Keynote address: Mary Louise Pratt (NYU)
Faculty discussants: Timothy Mitchell, Lydia Liu, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Brent Hayes Edwards and Claudio Lomnitz

This conference aims to establish a critical transdisciplinary dialogue to reflect upon the representations, ethics and material consequences of travel and the various ways in which modalities of travel simultaneously reinstate and violate notions of border and cartography - spatial, social, economic, legal, artistic, political or epistemological. What are the distinct types of travel? In what ways are travel and its ethics represented? How does travel condition boundaries and vice versa? How has media and popular literature affected our relationship to travel and the recording/archiving of it? How are categories such as identity, subjectivity, and sovereignty inscribed (negatively or positively) in the act of travel?

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Satyajit Ray Retrospective I:
From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy
April 15-30, 2009 :: Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center
Conference on Saturday, April 25, 2009 :: Furman Gallery, Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center

This series is presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Columbia University in collaboration with the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles. In conjunction with this series a major conference on Satyajit Ray will be held at the Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center on Saturday, April 25, bringing together scholars, film-makers, and critics from India and the United States to discuss his work. The conference will include a keynote lecture from Robert Young (Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature, New York University) and talks by Samik Banerjee (Theatre, film and arts critic; Vice Chairman, National School of Drama, India), Shyam Benegal (Filmmaker), Benjamin Conisbee Baer (Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature, Princeton University), Moinak Biswas (Film Studies Professor, Jadavpur University; Editor, Journal of the Moving Image), Marcia Landy (Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies, Secondary Appointment in the French and Italian Department, University of Pittsburgh), Mira Nair (President, Mirabai Films; Filmmaker/Director) and Ashish Rajyadhyaksha (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore). For more information visit http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/satyajit/program.html or contact inr2101 at columbia.edu.

Sponsored by: The Film Society of Lincoln Center in collaboration with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Heyman Center for the Humanities, and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University and the Humanities Division of University of California—Santa Cruz. Co-sponsors: Caliban Foundation and individual donors.

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Adrienne Rich and Antjie Krog: Prose, Poetry and the Art of the Political
Tues., April 28, 2009 :: 8:00pm :: Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, Columbia University

For many decades, Adrienne Rich and Antjie Krog have been at the forefront of the dissident tradition within their respective language worlds, writing poetry and prose that pushes the limits of form while questioning the structures of political violence in which they live.  Both are among the most lauded writers of their generation, receiving acclaim and prizes around the world despite but also because of their insistent critique of the status quo.  Both have created works of inimitable beauty and force.  Both have championed justice and equality. And each woman has read and admired the works of the other across the miles and oceans.

For the first time ever, these artists will share the stage, reading together from both prose and poetry. 

Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Institute for Comparative Literature, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and Barnard Women Poets. 

Free and open to the public, but WE ADVISE ADVANCE REGISTRATION.  Please phone (212) 854-8850 to reserve tickets.

Additional support for this event has been provided by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the Department of English, the Center for Literary Translation, and the Dutch Language Program of the Department of Germanic Languages.

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The Future Is Another Country: Re-thinking South African Political and Literary Cultures
A public discussion and book launch with Peter McDonald
Thurs., April 30, 2009 :: 4:00pm :: Deutsches Haus, Columbia University (420 West 116th St.)

Launch of Peter McDonald's new book The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences.

The author will be joined by Gail Gerhart and Hlonipha Mokoena, with introductions by Rosalind Morris. The event is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow and books available for sale.

Presented by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Institute of African Studies, and the Department of English.

 

 

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>>Fall 2008

The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University and Columbia University Press invite you to attend a panel discussion with interviewees from The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power moderated by the book’s author Nermeen Shaikh.

The Present as History offers a rare opportunity for renowned scholars to historically and politically address current issues of global power.

Panelists include:
Gayatri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, Talal Asad, and Sanjay Reddy

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 6:00PM

Location:
Columbia Univeristy
Maison Française: Buell Hall, East Gallery
515 W. 116th Street

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The Columbia University Center for Ethnomusicology invites you to attend an event in the series "New Evidence, 1400-1800" (co-organized by Columbia's Interdepartmental Committee on Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Bard Graduate Center)

October 30, 2008 at 6:00pm, SIPA (International Affairs Building), room 802

Jaime Lara (Yale University): "Aztec Christians: Reluctant Collaborators or Enthusiastic Partners?"

José Pardo Tomás (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain): "Medical Knowledge and Practices in a Creole Society: Texts, Objects and Images from New Spain 1576-1626"

Co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; the Science, Technology, Medicine and Society Seminar; the Department of Religion; the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the Institute for Latin American Studies; the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; the Department of History; and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

Jaime Lara is associate professor of Christian art and architecture and chair of the Program in Religion and the Arts at Yale University Divinity School and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He has written extensively on the colonial era of Latin America as well as on early Christianity, the Spanish Middle Ages, and medieval theater. His publications include City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (2004); Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico (2008); and numerous articles on liturgy, architecture, and eschatology in Latin America. He is currently writing a book on volcanoes, myths, and the Book of Revelation in the Andean countries.

José Pardo Tomás is a member of the Department of History of Science at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the transmission and dissemination of scientific and medical knowledge in early modern Spain and Latin America. His publications include Historia de yervas y plantas. Un tratado renacentista de materia médica (Barcelona, 1998), Ciencia y censura. La Inquisición Española y los libros científicos en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1991), Lettera del dottor Díego Alvarez Chanca, medico della Flotta di Colombo, 1493-1494 (Florence, 1989, in collaboration with Maurizio Rippa Bonati), Las primeras noticias sobre plantas americanas en las relaciones de viajes y crónicas de Indias (1493-1553) (Valencia, 1993, in collaboration with M.L. López Terrada), Nuevos materiales y noticias sobre la 'Historia de las plantas de Nueva España', de Francisco Hernández (Valencia, 1994, in collaboration with J.M. López Piñero), and La influencia de Francisco Hernández (1515-1587) en la constitución de la botánica y la materia médica modernas (Valencia, 1994, in collaboration with J.M. López Piñero).

 

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>>Spring 2008

Academic Freedom and the Decline of the Humanities

Tuesday 6 May 2008:

Global Cultural Studies
and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
present a colloquium:

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE DECLINE OF THE HUMANITIES

Kellogg Center
1501 International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 119th Street
[Click here for directions to the International Affairs Building]

What is academic freedom?

How is the issue changed if we think internationally?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of thinking of it in national legal terms?

What are "the humanities?"

Can the participants take on board the idea that the humanities can teach the practice of freedom?

How does this relate to the teaching of the pratice of unfreeom in the economic, political and religious spheres?

How can the teaching of the humanities be used as a resource from the perspective of the long-term practice of human rights?

Does academic freedom conflict with what are believed to be "cultural traditions?"

Do we have to make concessions to the degree of academic freedom that we want in varying political systems?

Can it be an absolute freedom?

What is the relationship between the right to education, the freedom of speech, and academic freedom?

Do the humanities play a role in clarifying these distinctions?

Moderators:

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
University Professor
and Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society,
Columbia University

Emily Apter
Professor of French
New York University

Panelists:

Kofi Anyidoho
University of Ghana -- Legon

Paul Bové
University of Pittsburgh

Aniket Jaaware
University of Pune

Samia Mehrez
American University of Cairo

Esmail al Nashif
Bir Zeit University, Palestine

Romila Thapar
Jawaharlal Nehru University

Ngugi wa Thiong'o
University of California, Irvine

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>>Fall 2007

BROWN BAG DISCUSSION SERIES

Kavery Nambisan:

 

Reality in Fiction: The Presumed Innocence of Writers and Readers

Thursday, November 14, 2007

12 noon

1134 International Affairs Building

Columbia University

 

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A Conversation with Orhan Pamuk

2006 Nobel laureate and author of the celebrated Istanbul: Memories of a City, Pamuk has written a host of other texts translated into English including The White Castle, The Black Book, The New Life, and Other Colors: Essays and a Story.

Andreas Huyssen, Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, founding director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, and chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University, will host this informal lunch discussion. Pamuk and Huyssen are currently co-teaching a course entitled "Words and Pictures."

Thursday, October 25, 2007
12 noon - 2 pm
Deutsches Haus, Columbia University
420 West 116th Street

 

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Ronit Ricci:

Islamic Literary Networks in South and Southeast Asia

Please join us for a presentation by our Postdoctoral Fellow, Ronit Ricci, who will explore the networks of travel, trade and Sufi brotherhoods often credited with the spread of Islam in parts of South and Southeast Asia. Her talk suggests that networks of language and literature are also influential elements of this progression. She uses textual sources in Javanese, Tamil and Malay.

Ronit Ricci received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan in 2006. Her research interests include South and Southeast Asian literatures- from the ancient to the post-colonial, History of the Book in Southeast Asia, Translation Studies, conversion narratives, travel literature, and globalization, past and present. Her current project is a book manuscript entitled Translating Conversion in South and Southeast Asia: The Islamic "Book of One Thousand Questions" in Javanese, Tamil and Malay examining the spread if Islam into South and Southeast Asia through the lens of translation processes, linguistic change and literary transmission, and is based on sources in three of the region's major languages.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007
12 noon
Heyman Center Common Room (2nd floor)
Columbia University

 

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