2004-2005



 

  
 
Human Rights and Democracy in Iran A public lecture by Mehrangiz Kar

Tuesday, November 16, 2004; 4 pm @ the University Club of UC Davis

A reception in honor of Mehrangiz Kar will follow her lecture.

Mehrangiz Kar is an Iranian human rights lawyer, writer, and essayist. She is the author of some fifteen books in Persian, the latest ones being, Gardanband-i Muqaddas (Spanga, Sweden, 2002) and Kudam haqq? Kudam taklif?: darbarah-'i vaz`iyat-i huquqi-i zan dar khanvadah (Teheran, 2001). Kar’s most recent work in English is “The Deadlock in Iran: Constitutional Constraints,” which appeared in Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). She is an honorary member of the American, Canadian, and English PEN Centers, and a recipient of the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize.

Sponsored by the UC Davis University Outreach and International Programs, UC Davis Extension, the School of Law, the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, the International Relations Program, the Scholars at Risk Network

For more information contact Nicole Ranganath: nranganath@ucdavis.edu



The Struggle to Reclaim the Past in Contemporary India: Neo-nationalism
and the Embattled Frontiers of Historiography A joint presentation by
Prof. Sumit Sarkar and Prof. Tanika Sarkar

Tuesday, December 14, 4 pm; Andrews Conference Room

The relationship between the writing of history and the collective sense
of a nation's past has always been fraught with contention and conflict.
Such conflict is particularly evident in contemporary India, where new
versions of militant and patriotic nationalism fostered by the rise of
right-wing Hindu political parties have forced attempts to radically
alter received versions of Indian history. Professors Tanika and Sumit
Sarkar, in a joint session will address the challenges confronting
historians of India in the light of these changes in the last two
decades.

Tanika Sarkar is Professor at the Center for Historical Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, and has been at the
forefront of women's history in India, and author of Hindu Wife, Hindu
Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2002 and Words to Win: A Modern Autobiography,
and Women and Right-Wing Movements, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999.

Until his recent retirement, Sumit Sarkar was Professor of History at
Delhi University, India, where he began teaching in 1976. Professor
Sarkar has been General Secretary of the Indian History Congress, and
Visiting Professor at Oxford, Canberra, Paris and Hawaii. His
publications include Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism,
Hindutva, History, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004, Writing Social
History, Oxford University Press, 1999, and A Critique on Colonial India,
Papyrus, 1985.

This event is sponsored by the Center for History, Society, and Culture,
the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, the Department of History, and
the Consortium for Women and Research.

For more information contact Sudipta Sen: ssen@ucdavis.edu



The Struggle to Reclaim the Past in Contemporary India: Neo-nationalism
and the Embattled Frontiers of Historiography A joint presentation by
Prof. Sumit Sarkar and Prof. Tanika Sarkar

Tuesday, December 14, 4 pm; Andrews Conference Room

The relationship between the writing of history and the collective sense
of a nation's past has always been fraught with contention and conflict.
Such conflict is particularly evident in contemporary India, where new
versions of militant and patriotic nationalism fostered by the rise of
right-wing Hindu political parties have forced attempts to radically
alter received versions of Indian history. Professors Tanika and Sumit
Sarkar, in a joint session will address the challenges confronting
historians of India in the light of these changes in the last two
decades.

Tanika Sarkar is Professor at the Center for Historical Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, and has been at the
forefront of women's history in India, and author of Hindu Wife, Hindu
Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2002 and Words to Win: A Modern Autobiography,
and Women and Right-Wing Movements, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999.

Until his recent retirement, Sumit Sarkar was Professor of History at
Delhi University, India, where he began teaching in 1976. Professor
Sarkar has been General Secretary of the Indian History Congress, and
Visiting Professor at Oxford, Canberra, Paris and Hawaii. His
publications include Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism,
Hindutva, History, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004, Writing Social
History, Oxford University Press, 1999, and A Critique on Colonial India,
Papyrus, 1985.

This event is sponsored by the Center for History, Society, and Culture,
the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, the Department of History, and
the Consortium for Women and Research.

For more information contact Sudipta Sen: ssen@ucdavis.edu



The Middle East/South Asia Program presents a lecture and discussion The Rebirth of Biography in Writing Social History: India and the Middle East

Richard M. Eaton

Thursday, January 27, 2005; 4 PM

Andrews Conference Room (Social Sciences and Humanities Building, 2nd Floor)

Co-sponsored with the Center for History, Society and Culture, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of History, and the Religious Studies Program

Dr. Richard Eaton, Professor of History, University of Arizona, is one of the most senior and well-known scholars of the social and cultural history of Islam specializing in India, the Persian-speaking world, Sufism and Islam, and the relationship between Asia and the West. He has long been an advocate for rethinking disciplinary boundaries between areas such as the Middle East and South Asia for the writing and teaching of world history. He is the author of several books including The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (2000), India’s Islamic Traditions, 711-1750 (2002), Essays on Islam and Indian History (2002), Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India (2004) and Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761 (forthcoming).

For more information contact Smriti Srinivas: ssrinivas@ucdavis.edu



The Middle East/South Asia Studies Program presents a lecture Knowledge in the Age of Empire: Academic Freedom After 9/11

Dr. Beshara Doumani

Tuesday, March 8, 2005; 4 pm

Memorial Union East Conference Room
(1st floor, across from the Corral)

Dr. Beshara Doumani is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His abiding interest is recovering the history of social groups, places, and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East. His specialty is the social and cultural history of peasants, merchants, artisans, and women who live in the provincial regions of the Arab East during the late Ottoman period. Books include “Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900” and “Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender.”

Co-sponsored with Middle East/South Asia Research Cluster; Center for History, Society, and Culture; and Davis Humanities Institute

For more information contact Suad Joseph: sjoseph@ucdavis.edu



The Institute for Governmental Affairs
and the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies present How Far Away Is the East?
Islamic Culture, Institutions, and Economic Development since the Middle Ages

"Social Identity and Economic Development in the Arab Middle East"


Avner Greif
Bowman Family Endowed Professor in the Humanities and Sciences,
Stanford University; Macarthur Fellow; author of Institutions: Theory and History
(Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2005)

“Why the Islamic Middle East Did Not Generate an Indigenous Corporate Law”
Timur Kuran
Professor of Economics and Law & King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture,
University of Southern California; Guggenheim Fellow; author of Islam and Mammon:
The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton UP, 2004)

Friday, March 18, 2005
Presentations and discussion 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Reception 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Andrews Conference Room
2203 Social Sciences and Humanities Building
Sponsored by IGA, MEMS, and the Program in Middle East/South Asia Studies

For more information contact Claire Waters: cmwaters@ucdavis.edu






Richard L. Nelson Gallery presents Memories from Bangladesh

Presented in collaboration with the

Middle East/South Asia Studies Program

Opening reception:

Thursday March 3 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm

Walter A. Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center, UC Davis

Exhibition Continues: March 3 through June 24th, 2005

Thanks to the following UC Davis departments and programs for their support:

Anthropology, Art, Art History, Asian-American Studies, Asian Pacific American Cultural Politics Research Group, Cross-Cultural Women’s and gender History, Cultural Studies, Davis Humanities Institute, Religious Studies, Teaching Resources Center, Women and Gender Studies.

For more information contact Baki Tezcan: btezcan@ucdavis.edu



International Society for Intellectual History – 2005 Conference Keynote Speaker:

Kemal Karpat

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Turkish Secularism and Islam: Positivism and Modernism versus Faith

Friday, April 1, 9:15 @ the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center, AGR Room

Kemal Karpat is the author of dozens of books and articles, including The politicization of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late Ottoman state (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ottoman population, 1830-1914: demographic and social characteristics (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), The gecekondu: rural migration and urbanization in Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 1976), and Turkey’s politics: the transition to a multi-party system (Princeton University Press, 1959).

For more information contact Baki Tezcan: btezcan@ucdavis.edu



International Society for Intellectual History – 2005 Conference Panel on Secularization in Islam

Chair: Suad Joseph, Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies, UC Davis

Participants:

Madhavi Sunder, Professor of Law, UC Davis Law School: “The New Enlightenment”
Maimul Ahsan Khan, Ph.D., “Secular Concepts in the Quran: New Approaches to Islamization”
Afshin Marashi, Assistant Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento, “'Secularizing' Iran: Modernization, the State, and the Construction of National Religion, 1921-1941”

For more information contact Allison Coudert: apcoudert@ucdavis.edu





“Conversations:” The Sociocultural Anthropology Discussion Series The Sociocultural Anthropology Wing invites you to participate in a presentation by Dr. Nadia Atif, an anthropologist and social development expert on gender, poverty and the environment from Egypt, titled Stereotyping: Middle of What, East of Whom?

“Conversations” will take place on Monday, April 11, 2005, at 5.30 PM at the home of Smriti Srinivas. This event is the fifteenth in a series of discussions focused on theses, research papers, works in progress, field-notes, and new projects and proposals by graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars.

“Conversations” is strongly committed to being a forum for debate, exchange, collective growth, and friendly criticism.

For more information contact Smriti Srinivas: ssrinivas@ucdavis.edu





Middle East/South Asia Studies Program presents Ascetics and Mystics in Medieval Baghdad

Michael Cooperson
Associate Professor of Arabic
University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

Wednesday, April 13, 4:10 @ 912 Sproul

Co-sponsored with the History Department and the Religious Studies Program

Michael Cooperson is the author of "Classical Arabic Biography: the heirs of the Prophet in the age of al-Ma'mun" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and one of the co-authors of "Interpreting the self : autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition," ed. Dwight F. Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

For more information contact Jocelyn Sharlet: jcsharlet@ucdavis.edu

Women and Development in the Middle East Dr. Nadia Atif, Fulbright Exchange Scholar

Atif is an anthropologist and social development expert on gender, poverty and the environment from Egypt.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The Colleges at La Rue, 5 p.m.

For more information contact Suad Joseph: sjoseph@ucdavis.edu



The Middle East/South Asia Studies Program and the Asian American Cultural Politics Research Group present:

Borders, Checkpoints, Crossings: Arab American and Asian American Studies

Ibrahim Aoude’

Professor, Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Nadine Naber

Assistant Professor, American Culture & Women’s Studies, UMichigan, Ann Arbor

Moderated by Sunaina Maira

Monday, April 25, 2005

Silo Cabernet Room, 4 p.m.

This panel focuses on convergences and divergences between the fields of Arab American and Asian American studies, and how they inform debates about empire, Orientalism, racialization, and gendered nationalisms, especially after 9/11. Borders and boundaries are issues that emerge in both fields as they address questions of self-definition, institutionalization, and interdisciplinarity, as well as negotiate checkpoints or obstacles as the field evolves.

Ibrahim Aoude’ is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is co-editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and has published work on Middle East politics, Arab American identity, and Hawaiian political economy and social movements.

Nadine Naber is Assistant Professor in American Culture and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is a member of the Arab Women’s Gathering Organizing Collective (AWGOC) and RAWAN (Radical Arab Women’s Activist Network) and is a graduate of UCD’s Anthropology department.

Sunaina Maira is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis.

Co-sponsored with Anthropology; Asian American Studies; Center for History, Society, and Culture; and Sociology

For more information, contact Sunaina Maira at smaira@ucdavis.edu


 

Feminist Approaches to South Asia
3-day conference May 7, 8, and 9

For more information contact Gayatri Gopinath: ggopinath@ucdavis.edu



Middle East/South Asia Studies Launch
An evening to celebrate one year of the program Wednesday, May 18, 2005

MU II, 5 p.m.

For more information contact Suad Joseph: sjoseph@ucdavis.edu



 

 

 

 

Student Organizations