PAST EVENTS
february 2024
29feb5:00 pm- 6:30 pmOn Lies: Strange Abundance in Slavery's Archive of Sex
Event Details
Date: Thursday, February 29th, 2024 Time: 5:00 - 6:30 PM (reception following)
Event Details
Date: Thursday, February 29th, 2024
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM (reception following)
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)
This talk explores the work of surfacing the history of sex in antebellum slavery. Unlike records from earlier periods of slaveholding in the Atlantic world, the archives of 19th century US slaveholders are abundant, yet that abundance is marked by the fictions and delusions that seduced and gripped the imaginations of slaveholding authors. Taking as a given that black women appear in fleeting and distorted forms in these records, this talk explores methods through which historians might reconstruct histories of black women’s survival on the backdrop of sex and slavery, with attention to the twin legacies of social history and ethical provocation in African American women’s history and black feminist theory.
Emily Owens is the David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, and the author of Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans. Her work broadly considers the ways that racism and misogyny get expressed in ordinary–and intimate–life.
Time
(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Event Details
Legal History Workshops - Spring 2024 Date: Wednesday, February 28th, 2024 Time: 4:20 - 6:00 PM
Event Details
Legal History Workshops – Spring 2024
Date: Wednesday, February 28th, 2024
Time: 4:20 – 6:00 PM
Location: Fayerweather 411 (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)
Time
(Wednesday) 4:20 pm - 6:00 pm
28feb4:10 pm- 6:00 pmEnding History: the Historiography of Persian Chronicle Conclusions
Event Details
We eagerly anticipate your participation in the discussion of Professor Sholeh A. Quinn on " Ending History: the Historiography of
Event Details
We eagerly anticipate your participation in the discussion of Professor Sholeh A. Quinn on ” Ending History: the Historiography of Persian Chronicle Conclusions”
Read the paper here.
The prefaces or introductions (dibachah/muqaddimah) to early modern Persian chronicles consist of highly conventional elements, in which chroniclers showcased their most elevated writing styles. In these ornate narratives, they introduced themselves, described the circumstances under which they came to write their histories, and introduced their chronicle, sometimes even providing a table of contents and a bibliography for their work. While some scholarly attention has been paid to chronicle dibachahs, we know far less about chronicle conclusions (khatimah). Some historians were unable to conclude their histories and their texts remain unfinished. Others, however, wrote more formal conclusions, thereby creating a book end to their introduction. The Safavid chronicler Iskandar Beg Munshi, for example, in the conclusion to his Tarikh-i ‘alam-ara-yi ‘Abbasi, lamented that he had run out of time and was unable to include additional material in his chronicle. Yet other chroniclers ended their texts with specific types of chapters, such as a tazkirah section, listing categories of poets, scholars, and administrative officials, or a section describing marvels and wonders of the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a series of Persian chronicles written under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals in order to understand better the nature of such conclusions and their place in the larger context of Persianate historiography. Particular attention will be paid to instances of imitative writing and historiographical models.
This is a closed event; attendees may read the paper in advance, which is distributed to members of the Workshops & Colloquiums Email List. Contact da2999@columbia.edu to be added to the list.
Time
(Wednesday) 4:10 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Knox Hall - Room 207
26feb3:31 pm- 3:31 pmAfrica in the Time of the World
Event Details
Date: Monday, March 25th, 2024. Time: 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Event Details
Date: Monday, March 25th, 2024.
Time: 6:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: East Gallery, Maison Française, Buell Hall (515 West 116th Street, New York, NY 10027)
RSVP here.
Mamadou Diouf, in conversation with Manthia Diawara, Emmanuelle Saada, and Gayatri Spivak.
In his new book, L’Afrique dans le temps du monde, historian Mamadou Diouf examines the impact of African historians on the field of history at the turning point when Africa achieved independence from colonial rule. African history asserted the value and importance of a past that had been depreciated under Western imperialism, while also decentering history through the use of libraries such as the Islamic Library and the study of the “Black Atlantic,” a term first coined by British sociologist Paul Gilroy to refer to that hybrid historical reality. This concept aimed to “reinstate Africa to its pioneering role in world history” according to Diouf: “For Africa and the Black diaspora, taking its history into its own hands meant reclaiming cultural, creative, and historiographic parity, and decoupling the concept of the universal from Occidental imperialism.” Mamadou Diouf examines the different currents and schools of African history (those of Dakar, Ibadan, Dar-es-Salaam) and important figures that shaped African historiography, such as Cheikh Anta Diop, and evokes some of its main controversies and debates.
Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies. His research interests include urban, political, social and intellectual history in colonial and postcolonial Africa. His publications include Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal (ed. 2013), New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, and Power (with Mara A. Leichtman, 2009), and La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal (with M. C. Diop & D. Cruise O’Brien, 2002), among others.
Manthia Diawara is Professor in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia.
Emmanuelle Saada is Professor of History and French and Chair of the Department of French at Columbia.
This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, Institute of African Studies, Department of History, and MESAAS.
Time
(Monday) 3:31 pm - 3:31 pm
16feb1:30 pm- 4:00 pmWhere is the University?
Event Details
Date: Friday, February 16th, 2024 Time: 1:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Event Details
Date: Friday, February 16th, 2024
Time: 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: The Forum, Room 315 (601 West 125th Street)
Register here.
Please join the Committee on Global Thought for a workshop that explores the place of the university in today’s society.
The place of universities in today’s world is more uncertain than ever. Broadly, and under dramatically different conditions, universities worldwide have de-emphasized their historical commitment the cultivation of critical thought and the pursuit of basic knowledge in favor of more instrumental priorities. Whereas the planet itself, formerly understood as a patchwork of regions or “areas,” has increasingly become an object of study shared across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In addition to reshaping teaching and research, these changes have focused renewed attention on universities themselves—and their multiple constituencies—as global, social agents. Arguably, both the internal critique of institutional contradictions and external pressure exerted by hostile interests reflect the new uncertainties.
The Committee on Global Thought is a forum for exploring the implications of such large-scale tendencies in specific terms. In this spirit, “Where Is the University?” inaugurates a multifaceted program on the university as a world where microcosm and macrocosm meet, raising the kinds of questions from which genuine knowledge has long arisen.
Introduction:
Reinhold Martin, Chair, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Response:
Manan Ahmed, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Panelists:
Andrea Cassatella, Makerere University
Senior Research Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research
Abigail Huston Boggs, Wesleyan University
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Isaac Kamola, Trinity College
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Sharon Stein, University of British Columbia
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies
Time
(Friday) 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
The Forum
601 W 125th St, New York, NY 10027
16feb12:00 pm- 1:00 pmThe History of Gaza: The Key to War and Peace in the Middle East
Event Details
Event Details
Date: February 16th, 2024
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Location: Via Zoom. Please register for Zoom link.
RSVP here. More information available here.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, in conversation with Rashid Khalidi
French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu has written a deep history of Gaza in Gaza, a History and has just published Middle East, a Political History, from 395 to the Present with Polity. He provides insights into the past and present importance of Gaza in this virtual conversation with Rashid Khalidi. Gaza, a History reveals that Gaza has been since Antiquity a prosperous oasis and a commercial hub that served as a springboard for any Middle Eastern empire to conquer Egypt and for any Nile Valley-based power to attack the Levant. This imperial pendulum went back and forth for centuries until the British Army, led by Allenby, entered Gaza in 1917, on the very day that the Balfour Declaration was made public in London. But worse was to come in 1948, with Gaza turning into the enclave of a geographical “strip,” and one quarter of the Arab population of Palestine now crowded on only 1% of their historical homeland. Since then, Israel has waged no less than fifteen wars on Gaza, all won militarily, but lost politically, Filiu argues, except for the first Intifada that paved the way for the first Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Any attempt to revive such a peace process should start from Gaza, which remains the key to war and peace in the Middle East.
Jean-Pierre Filiu is professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po, Paris. A historian and an Arabist, he has also held visiting professorships at the Universities of Columbia and Georgetown. Hurst and Oxford University Press published his Arab Revolution in 2011, Gaza, a History in 2014 (MEMO Book Award) and From Deep State to Islamic State in 2015, after University of California Press had published in 2011 his award-winning Apocalypse in Islam. His most recent book, Middle East, a Political History, from 395 to the Present has just been published by Polity. His books have been translated in more than fifteen languages, including Arabic and Turkish.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is author of: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 (2020); Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013); Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1996); Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986); British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980); and co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982) and The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991), and The Other Jerusalem: Rethinking the History of the Sacred City (2020).
This virtual conversation is co-sponsored by the Department of History, MESAAS, the Columbia Maison Française and the Alliance Program.
Time
(Friday) 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location
Zoom
13feb6:00 pm- 7:30 pmWhat if the Economy Worked for Democracy?
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Location: The Forum at Columbia University, 601 W. 125th St., New York, NY 10027
More information and registration here.
Columbia’s Center for Political Economy invites you to a discussion by leading scholars who bring their expertise in law, economics, classics, and political science to bear on this pressing question during a time of great uncertainty.
Bridging traditional divisions that separate academic disciplines, this vital conversation will explore structural forces undermining shared prosperity, tradeoffs inherent in economic policymaking, and pathways to a more just and inclusive economy, focusing on preserving and promoting political economy for democracy.
Speakers include Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and Professors Ira Katznelson (Columbia), Amy Kapczynski (Yale), Josiah Ober (Stanford), and James Robinson (University of Chicago).
All who are interested in the connection between scholarly innovation, equitable growth, and constitutional government are encouraged to attend.
By registering for this event, you are agreeing to adhere to Columbia University’s Rules of Conduct.
Time
(Tuesday) 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
The Forum
601 W 125th St, New York, NY 10027
january 2024
31jan6:00 pm- 8:00 pmPolitics of Memory: Anti-semitism in Contemporary Western Europe
Event Details
Politics of Memory: Anti-semitism in Contemporary Western Europe - A Roundtable with Fabien
Event Details
Politics of Memory: Anti-semitism in Contemporary Western Europe – A Roundtable with Fabien Theofilakis, Stefanos Geroulanos, Andrew Port, and Mark Mazower
Date: January 31st, 2024
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: East Gallery, Maison Française (515 West 116th Street, New York, NY 10027)
More information and registration available here.
This roundtable will explore the contemporary politics of anti-semitism in western Europe in historical perspective. Focusing on the cases of postwar France and Germany, discussants will ask how a set of debates that emerged out of consideration of the Holocaust have been transformed in recent years and affected most recently by events in the Middle East.
The discussants are: Stefanos Geroulanos [Professor of European Intellectual History, NYU], Andrew Port [Professor of History, Wayne State University] and Fabien Theofilakis [Professor of History, Paris-1, Sorbonne]. The chair will be Mark Mazower [Dept of History, Columbia University]
Participant Profiles:
Stefanos Geroulanos is Director of the Remarque Institute at NYU where he teaches modern European intellectual history, specialising in France. His latest book is The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and our Obsession with Human Origins (2024, forthcoming)
Mark Mazower is SNF Director of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination and Ira D. Wallach Professor of History, Columbia. His books include Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (2008) and What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home (2017)
Andrew Port is Professor of History and author of the widely acclaimed Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust (2023) described by Samuel Moyn as ‘the most important study of memory, politics, and the ongoing construction of public norms written in a long time.’
Fabien Theofilakis is the author of numerous publications on wartime captivity and camps in the Second World War, the Eichmann trial and the memory of the Holocaust.
This event is sponsored by the Maison Francaise, the Alliance Program, and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Department of History.
Time
(Wednesday) 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Location
Maison Française
515 West 116th Street New York, NY 10027
31jan5:00 pm- 7:00 pmNecessary Trouble: Growing Up At Midcentury
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, January 31st Time: 5:00 -
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, January 31st
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)
Join us for a book talk held by Drew Gilpin Faust (President Emerita, Harvard University) on her publication Necessary Trouble: Growing up at Midcentury featuring Stephanie McCurry and Lien-Hang Nguyen as discussants.
Time
(Wednesday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
22jan5:00 pm- 6:30 pmThe Afterlife of Ottoman Europe: Muslims in Habsburg Bosnia Herzegovina
Event Details
Date: Monday, January 22nd Time: 5:00 - 6:30 PM
Event Details
Date: Monday, January 22nd
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)
RSVP here.
Book talk by Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular (Rutgers University) featuring discussants Mark Mazower (Columbia University) and Zeynep Çelik (Columbia University) and moderated by Tunç A. Şen (Columbia University).
The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe examines how Bosnian Muslims navigated the Ottoman and Habsburg domains following the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia Herzegovina after the 1878 Berlin Congress. Prominent members of the Ottoman imperial polity, Bosnian Muslims became minority subjects of Austria-Hungary, developing a relationship with the new authorities in Vienna while transforming their interactions with Istanbul and the rest of the Muslim world. Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular explores the enduring influence of the Ottoman Empire during this period—an influence perpetuated by the efforts of the imperial state from afar, and by its former subjects in Bosnia Herzegovina negotiating their new geopolitical reality. Muslims’ endeavors to maintain their prominence and shape their organizations and institutions influenced imperial considerations and policies on occupation, sovereignty, minorities, and migration.
Contact Information:
Time
(Monday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
december 2023
4dec6:00 pm- 7:30 pmOn Feminism and Palestine: A Faculty Roundtable Discussion
Event Details
Date: Monday, December 4th, 2023 Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM Location: Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall, Pulitzer
Event Details
Date: Monday, December 4th, 2023
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Location: Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall, Pulitzer Hall (2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027)
RSVP requested. Please RSVP by clicking here.
Featuring Professor Lila Abu-Lughod (Anthropology and ISSG), Professor Jafari Sinclaire Allen (African American and African Diaspora Studies), Professor Jack Halberstam (English & Comparative Literature and ISSG) Professor Premilla Nadasen (History and BCRW), Professor Neferti Tadiar (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and moderated by Professor Sarah Haley (History and ISSG).
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall, Pulitzer Hall, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
2950 Broadway New York, NY 10027
november 2023
28nov3:30 pm- 5:30 pmCommunity Discussion: Racism, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, November 28th, 2023 Time: 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM Location: Calder Lounge, Uris Hall (
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, November 28th, 2023
Time: 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Location: Calder Lounge, Uris Hall (3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027)
More information available here.
At times of conflict—when the world is looking with dismay at the devastating loss of life, or when disagreement about politics, policy, or values is dividing communities near and far—many are looking for ways to create common ground on campus. How can we make room for agreement as well as disagreement, discovery, and learning?
In this spirit—which is also the spirit of our Core Curriculum—Arts and Sciences is offering a series of Community Discussions that will bring together faculty with relevant expertise and students who want to join the conversation, welcoming diverging perspectives to build greater mutual understanding.
Participants: Rebecca Kobrin (Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History; Co-Director, Institute for Jewish Studies), Emmanuelle Saada (Professor of French; Chair, Department of French ) and Claudia Breger (Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature; Chair, Department of Germanic Languages)
Time
(Tuesday) 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Location
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
3022 Broadway
20nov4:15 pm- 6:00 pmRethinking the Second War in South Asia: Between Theatres and Beyond Battles
Event Details
Date: Monday, November 20th, 2023 Time: 4:15 PM - 6:00 PM
Event Details
Date: Monday, November 20th, 2023
Time: 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: 208 Knox Hall (606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY 10027 and remotely via Zoom.
RSVP here.
Join Columbia University’s South Asia Institute for a special journal issue of Modern Asian Studies, edited by Andrew Amstutz (Queens College) and Isabel Huacuja Alonso (MESAAS) and featuring presentations by Debashree Mukherjee (MESAAS), Andrew Amstutz, and Shaunna Rodrigues (MESAAS)
This event is co-sponsored by the South Asia Institute and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
Time
(Monday) 4:15 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Knox Hall (606 West 122nd Street #208)
Knox Hall (606 West 122nd Street #208)
16nov3:30 pm- 5:00 pmCommunity Discussion: War and Peace in Israel/Palestine
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 16th, 2024 Time: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM Location: Calder Lounge,
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 16th, 2024
Time: 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Calder Lounge, Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
RSVP here. Reservations are welcomed, but not required.
Professors Yinon Cohen (Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies) and Rashid Khalidi (Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies)
At times of conflict—when the world is looking with dismay at the devastating loss of life, or when disagreement about politics, policy, or values is dividing communities near and far—many are looking for ways to create common ground on campus. How can we make room for agreement as well as disagreement, discovery, and learning? In this spirit—which is also the spirit of our Core Curriculum—Arts and Sciences is offering a series of Community Discussions that will bring together faculty with relevant expertise and students who want to join the conversation, welcoming diverging perspectives to build greater mutual understanding.
Time
(Thursday) 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Location
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
3022 Broadway
9nov5:00 pm- 6:30 pmEroticizing Bloodlust: The Ongoing Legacies of Sexual Prohibition Laws
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 9th, 2023 Time: 5:00 - 6:30 PM (reception following) Location:
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 9th, 2023
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM (reception following)
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)
When the first Africans landed at Fort Comfort in 1619, some of the Angolans evidently married their Native American and English counterparts. Using this confounding situation of intermixture upon the 1619 landing as a departure point and foil, as well as Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment rationale against miscegenation as a pivot, this paper considers the emergence, entanglement, and ongoing impact of moral, social, and legal codes against miscegenation, sodomy, incest, and bestiality. What is the cultural logic that historically has bound together these laws, and what might this logic tell us about the current cultural warfare over LGBTQIA+ inclusion and rights?
Marlon Ross is Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness, Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era, and The Contours of Masculine Desire.
Time
(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 9th Time: 4:10 PM - 6:00 PM Location: 207 Knox Hall (606 W 122nd
Event Details
Date: Thursday, November 9th
Time: 4:10 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: 207 Knox Hall (606 W 122nd St, New York, NY 10027)
Featuring Nancy Khalek (Brown University).
Time
(Thursday) 4:10 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Knox Hall 207 606 W 122 st
Knox Hall 207 606 W 122 st
1nov11:45 am- 1:00 pmHow We Won: The WGA Writers Strike and the Future of Work
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, November 1st, 2023 Time: 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
Event Details
Time
(Wednesday) 11:45 am - 1:00 pm
Location
Allan Rosenfield Building 722 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032, Room 532
october 2023
27oct - 28oct 279:00 amoct 28Building the Turkish Republic: The Early Decades
Event Details
Date: October 27, 2023 - October 28, 2023
Event Details
Date: October 27, 2023 – October 28, 2023
Time: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Location: Buell Hall (515 West 116th Street, New York, NY 10027)
This event is in-person and open to the public, but registration is required. Please register here.
The full program is viewable here.
Day One: October 27th
9:00 AM – Registration
9:30 AM – Opening
Welcome: Neslihan Şenocak, Director of SSC, Columbia University
Introductory Remarks: Zeynep Çelik, Sakıp Sabancı Visiting Professor, Columbia University; A. Tunç Şen, Deputy Director of SSC, Columbia University
10:00 AM – Panel 1: Institutions
Benjamin Fortna, University of Arizona. “Education from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic: Continuity and Change in an Iconic Endeavor.”
Ali Cengizkan, METU and Bilkent University. “Legacy of the Early Planning Decisions on the Making of the Republican Capital: Ankara 1920-1960.”
Feza Günergun, Istanbul University. “The Aurora of Scientific Research in Republican Turkey: Institutions and Actors.”
Discussant: Nükhet Varlık, Rutgers University.
12:00 PM – Lunch Break
1:45 PM – Panel 2: Peoples
Ari Şekeryan, Independent Scholar. “Between ‘Armistice Complex’ and Promises of Civic Nationalism: Armenians in Early Republican Turkey.”
Ayşe Ozil, Sabancı University. “Agency and Society in a Minority Regime: Greeks in Early Republican Istanbul.”
Louis Fishman, Brooklyn College, CUNY. “From Ottoman Jews to Turkish Ones: The Making of a [Disappearing] Religious Minority During the First Decades of the Turkish Republic.”
Discussant: Mark Mazower, Columbia University
3:45 PM – Coffee Break
4:00 PM – Panel 3: Religion
Amit Bein, Clemson University. “Turkey, Islam, and the Middle East in the Interwar Period.”
Sevgi Adak, Aga Khan University. “Women, Kemalism, and the State: Revisiting Early Republican Gender Policies and Their Implications.”
Markus Dressler, Leipzig University. “Nationalist Knowledge Production and Policies on the Alevis in the Kemalist Era.”
Discussant: Joseph Massad, Columbia University.
6:00 PM: Reception
Day Two: October 28th
9:50 AM – Welcome from CGC Istanbul
Welcome: İpek Cem Taha, Director of Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul
10:00 AM: Panel 4 – Foundations
Ayşe Buğra, Boğaziçi University. “Social Policy and the Early Republican Perspectives on Development.”
Reşat Kasaba, University of Washington. “The Masters of the Nation: The Early Republican State and Turkey’s Peasants.”
Levent Köker, Gazi University. “Revolutionary Antinomies: Constitutional Change and Legal Reform in Early Republican Turkey.”
Discussant: Benjamin Fortna, University of Arizona.
12:00 PM – Lunch Break
1:45 PM – Panel 5: Arts
Esra Dicle, Boğaziçi University. “Theater in People’s Houses and the Construction of the Modern Nation-State.”
Nergis Ertürk, Pennsylvania State University. “Literary Entanglements Across Turkey and the Soviet Union.”
Savaş Arslan, Dokuz Eylül University. “Early Cinema in Turkey.”
Discussant: Sibel Erol, New York University.
3:45 PM – Coffee Break
4:00 PM – Panel 6: Opposition
Christine Philliou, University of California, Berkeley. “Muhalefet and the Transposition of Political Opposition, 1918-1928.”
James Ryan, Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Vectors of Dissent: Gender, Race, and Class Politics Underneath Kemalist Authoritarianism”
İlker Aytürk, Bilkent University. “Turkish Opposition in Early Republican Turkey: The Rise and Fall of the Center-Periphery Thesis.”
Discussant: Ayşe Kadıoğlu, Sabancı University.
This event is organized by the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia University and co-sponsored by the Columbia Global Centers – Istanbul.
Time
27 (Friday) 9:00 am - 28 (Saturday) 6:00 pm
Location
Buell Hall
26oct5:00 pm- 6:30 pmThe Assault on History and Public Education
Event Details
Date: Thursday, October 26th Time: 5:00 - 6:30
Event Details
Date: Thursday, October 26th
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM
Location: Buell Hall (515 W. 116th Street, New York, NY 10027
Please RSVP to history@columbia.edu.
In the last two years, 16 states passed laws prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts” like “CRT” or “gender ideology.” Last school year, there were 3,362 cases of school library books being banned or challenged, up from 345 in 2019. Millions of American K-12 students now attend school in districts where their access to books and information is constrained, and where educators face fines or firing for how they teach history or for supporting LGBTQ+ students. The assault on history and public education reflects the priorities of several distinct political movements, not educators. It has huge stakes not only for teaching and learning at all levels, but for the future of our democracy.
Longtime education advocate Eliza Byard will survey what is happening across the country, discuss how we got here, and take a look ahead. Eliza Byard is the co-founder and Senior Advisor to The Campaign for Our Shared Future (COSF), a non-partisan group that monitors and responds to local, state, and federal legislative, policy, and regulatory developments threatening equity in publicly funded K-12 education in the US. From 2008-2021, she was the Executive Director of GLSEN, a pioneering non-profit that developed a powerful national network of students, educators, and other school stakeholders to advocate for LGBTQ+ students and issues in education. She holds a PhD in History from Columbia University.
This event is sponsored by the Columbia University Department of History.
Time
(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Location
Buell Hall, Maison Française
515 West 116th Street, New York, NY, United States)
Event Details
Date: October 20th, 2023 - October
Event Details
Date: October 20th, 2023 – October 21st, 2023
Time: 3:30 PM – 7:00 PM (October 20th); 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM (October 21st)
Location: Rare Book and Manuscript Library (6th Floor East Butler Library, 535 W 114th St, New York, NY 10027); St. Paul’s Chapel (209 Broadway, New York, NY 10007); 106 Jerome L. Greene Hall (435 W. 116th St., New York, NY 10027)
Registration required. Please register here.
Opening Reception: 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Join us for a gallery featuring illumination, calligraphy, and paintings exhibited by New York Islamic Arts.
Concert: 6 PM, St. Paul’s Chapel
Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad Qawwali Group will have a live performance.
Conference: 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM, 106 Jerome L. Greene Hall
Time
20 (Friday) 3:30 pm - 21 (Saturday) 7:00 pm
Location
Butler Library, 535 W. 114 St., New York, NY 10027 Room/Area: Room 203, then Kempner Gallery, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 6th floor, Butler Library
Event Details
EVENT VIDEO - DAY ONE EVENT VIDEO - DAY TWO The Center for Urban History
Event Details
EVENT VIDEO – DAY ONE
EVENT VIDEO – DAY TWO
The Center for Urban History (Ukraine), The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination (USA), the Columbia University Department of History (USA), CERCEC/EHESS (France), and the Harriman Institute introduce Sleepless Nights, Dreamy Nights: Working with Dreams and Other Nighttime Documents in Eastern Europe and Beyond.
Listening to sirens and phone alerts. Staying updated through the media to make informed choices about when and where to sleep. Constantly monitoring the time and adapting to curfew rules. Experiencing nights of restlessness as well as nights filled with vivid dreams. These are all part of the nightly realities faced by civilians enduring wartime conditions. The full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation and the war in Ukraine push us to ask new questions, revisit historical accounts, and explore connections and divergences in the ways in which wars are experienced and imagined while also pursuing an inquiry into how war experiences can highlight the ways we imagine ourselves and our societies.
Paying attention to the night rather than the daytime helps us capture personal emotions and experiences, which, in turn, shape social and cultural realities and imaginations. A study of the distinct temporality and spatiality of the nighttime allows for a more nuanced exploration of how the personal and the social manifest and intersect. The night is a time of solitude, reflection, individual contemplation, introspection, and self-examination. It is also a time of greater vulnerability, on a personal and a collective level, and for this reason, bears the most significant impact and the greatest disruption in times of insecurity and war. Thus, focusing on nighttime is critical for exploring societies and individuals in turbulent and violent times.
Much of the research in night studies centers around urban environments: cities come alive at night with a unique set of activities; nightlife, entertainment, nocturnal work, and transportation all share an urban dimension. Throughout history, wandering the streets at night has often been associated with shadowy worlds inhabited by rogues, night-shift workers, and rule-breakers. Nevertheless, the night offers more than just a refuge for vice, so another facet of the night exists beyond this perception. Focusing on personal accounts, including dreams and nighttime reflections in various personal accounts and documents, can be essential for a multifaceted understanding of historical events, particularly traumatic events such as war and mass violence. Such sources can provide a nuanced perspective that transcends traditional historical narratives, shedding light on the diverse experiences of individuals from different backgrounds.
The region in the focus is Eastern Europe, a highly heterogeneous place marked by a complex and intertwined history, populated with communities sharing geographical space and divided by conflicting experiences, especially in the context of violence and wars. By delving into personal accounts and dreams from this region, we gain insights that extend well beyond regional boundaries. These accounts can serve as bridges to connect with other regions that have undergone similar challenges and conflicts, fostering a broader dialogue on shared human experiences during times of upheaval. In this way, our focus on Eastern Europe serves as a departure point to build a more interconnected and comprehensive understanding of history and its reverberations with other regions and places globally. The workshop contributes to exploring such connections by bringing research from Southern Europe and Latin America into conversation.
The workshop builds on a documentation initiative launched by the Center for Urban History after February 24, 2022, which focused on gathering diaries and dreams related to the war, as well as on the seminar “Documenting Dreams of War” that took place online on May 15, 2023. In bringing together anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, and psychotherapists, the workshop aims to foster methodological reflections and share experiences and analytical frameworks. Our hope is that the intimate format and the extended time we allot for discussions will help foster present and future collaborations.
Programming Committee
- Bohdan Shumylovych, Sofia Dyak (Center for Urban History)
- Malgorzata Mazurek, Ofer Dynes (Columbia University)
- Masha Cerovic (CERCEC/EHESS)
Organizational Committee
- Maryana Mazurak, Viktoriia Panas (Center for Urban History)
- Marie d’Origny, Meredith Hunter-Mason (Institute for Ideas and Imagination), Eileen Huhn (Harriman Institute)
- Thomas da Silva (CERCEC/EHESS)
Credits
Cover Image: Sen or Dream by Marek Włodarski, 1930, part of the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław // National Museum in Wrocław // via culture.pl
Time
19 (Thursday) 9:00 am - 21 (Saturday) 5:00 pm
Location
Salle de Conférence, Reid Hall
6oct9:30 am- 5:30 pmCelebrating István Deák: Historian, Teacher, Provocateur
Event Details
Date: Friday, October 6th,
Event Details
Date: Friday, October 6th, 2023
Time: 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM EST
Location: Maison Francaise, East Gallery (515 W 166th Street, New York, NY 10027)
Register here.
Please join Columbia University’s Department of History, the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, and the Harriman Institute for a conference in honor of István Deák (1926-2023).
Program – Friday, October 6, 2023
9:30am | Opening
10:00 – 11:30am | István the Teacher
Chair: Eagle Glassheim (UBC)
- Paul Hanebrink (Rutgers University)
- Jennifer Foray (Purdue University)
- Daniel Unowsky (University of Memphis)
- Marsha Rozenblit (University of Maryland)
11:30am – 1:00pm | István and Hungary: Then and Now
Chair: Attila Pók (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
- Csaba Békés (Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary)
- Charles Gati (Johns Hopkins University)
- Laszlo Karsai (University of Szeged, Hungary)
- Judit Molnár (Jozsef Attila University, Hungary)
- Peter Pastor (Montclair State University)
2:30 – 4:00pm | István and East Central European History: Roundtable
Chair: Dominique Reill (University of Miami)
- Natasha Wheatley (Princeton University)
- Gabor Egry (Institute of Political History, Budapest)
- Robert Nemes (Colgate University)
- Iris Rachamimov (Tel Aviv University)
4:30 – 5:30pm | Keynote
Pieter Judson (European University Institute)
Time
(Friday) 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
Location
East Gallery, Buell Hall (Maison Française)
East Gallery, Buell Hall (Maison Française)
5oct6:15 pm- 8:00 pmCrooked Plow: Translating Social Justice in Brazil
Event Details
Crooked Plow: Translating Social Justice in Brazil Location: Columbia University, Faculty House, 2nd Floor, 64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY
Event Details
Crooked Plow: Translating Social Justice in Brazil
Location: Columbia University, Faculty House, 2nd Floor, 64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY 10027 (https://facultyhouse.columbia.edu/content/directions)
Day/Time: Thursday, October 5th, 6:15 PM – 8 PM.
Register here.
For more information contact: Amy Chazkel ac2227@columbia.edu
Join us for a discussion of Brazilian author Itamar Vieira Junior’s best-selling novel Crooked Plow, now available in English. Vieira Junior will be in conversation with feminist anthropologist and political activist Keisha-Khan Perry and poet and Crooked Plow translator Johnny Lorenz to explore literary writing, social justice work, and the long shadow that slavery casts. They will collectively consider how profoundly local textures of daily life and historical memory can resonate beyond the places that inspired them.
About the Book
Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. This fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil’s poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
Crooked Plow has been heralded as the most important Brazilian novel of the century so far, and Vieira Junior was profiled by The New York Times in early 2022; “Black Authors Shake Up Brazil’s Literary Scene.” Translated by Johnny Lorenz in June 2023, Crooked Plow has been praised as “[an] engrossing story [that] gives visibility to many who have traditionally been marginalized,” (Washington Post), “an impressive first novel by an important literary voice” (Financial Times), and “a compelling vision of history’s downtrodden and neglected” (New York Times Book Review).
Speakers
Itamar Vieira Junior was born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1979. He is a writer and geographer and has a PhD in Ethnic African Studies from UFBA, the Federal University of Bahia. In October 2018, he won Portugal’s Leya Prize for Crooked Plow. He was also a finalist for Brazil’s Jabuti Prize for his book of short stories, The Executioner’s Prayer, published with a grant from Bahia’s Secretary of Culture. That book won the 2016-2017 Humberto de Campos Prize from the Brazilian Writers’ Alliance (Rio de Janeiro section), and second place in the 2018 Bunkyo Literature Prize, awarded by the Brazilian Society for Japanese Culture and Social Assistance. His first book of short stories, Dias (Caramurê, 2012), was the winner of the Prémio Arte e Cultura (Literatura – 2012). He is a columnist for the São Paulo Review.
Johnny Lorenz, son of Brazilian immigrants to the United States, is an associate professor at Montclair State University. In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Translated Book for his translation of A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector (New Directions). His book of original poems, Education by Windows, was published in 2018 by Poets & Traitors Press; it includes his translations of the poet Mario Quintana, for which he received a Fulbright grant. He has published articles on Brazilian literature in journals such as Luso-Brazilian Review and Modern Fiction Studies. He is also the translator of Lispector’s The Besieged City (New Directions).
Keisha-Khan Perry’s research focuses on urban social movements against the violence of forced displacement. A feminist anthropologist and political activist, she is the author of the prize-winning book, Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil, an ethnographic account of Black women’s activism for housing and land rights in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador. With a geographic emphasis on the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil, she continues to write on issues of Black land ownership and loss and the related gendered racial logics of Black dispossession in the African diaspora. She has served on the Latin American Studies Association delegation to investigate the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, participates on a team of 16 researchers for the National Science Foundation Grant “Research Coordination Network: Housing Justice in Unequal Cities,” and serves on the board of the Washington Brazil Office.
Signed books will be available for purchase at the event.
Time
(Thursday) 6:15 pm - 8:00 pm
Location
Faculty House
64 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10027
september 2023
Event Details
Date: Thursday, September 28th Time: 4:10 - 6:00 PM
Time
(Thursday) 4:10 pm - 6:00 pm
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, September 27th, 2023 Time: 4:10 PM
Time
(Wednesday) 4:10 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Knox Hall - Room 207
Event Details
Date: Thursday, September 21, 2023 Time: 5:00 - 6:30 PM (reception following) Location:
Event Details
Date: Thursday, September 21, 2023
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM (reception following)
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall (1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NU 10027)
Last June, the Supreme Court opened a chasm in the longstanding legal settlement between the First Amendment and anti-discrimination law. In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Court ruled that public accommodations may deny service to same-sex couples under certain circumstances. This talk traces the new right to exclude back to the Christian Right movement lawyers who first advanced it in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Beyond explaining how market discrimination became protected speech, this historical genealogy helps locate lawyers for the New Christian Right in the broader history of the conservative legal movement.
Kate Redburn is an Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. They are completing a JD-PhD in History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale.
Time
(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
19sep5:00 pm- 7:00 pmLow Library: The Columbia University Opium Connection
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, September 19th, 2023 Time: 5:30 PM
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, September 19th, 2023
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: 108 Jerome L. Greene Hall (435 W 116th St, New York, NY 10027)
Register here. Registration is required for this event.
Join author Amitav Ghosh for a discussion of his new book, Smoke and Ashes, as he explores the effects of the opium trade on Britain, China, and India and Columbia University’s own connection to the opium trade.
This event is sponsored by the Columbia University and Slavery Seminar, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and the Department of History.
Time
(Tuesday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location
Jerome Green Hall
12sep5:00 pm- 7:00 pmEli and the Octopus Book Talk with Matt Garcia and Karl Jacoby
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, September 12th Time: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, September 12th
Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Location: Room 406 (Herbert Lehman Suite) International Affairs Building, 420 W. 118th Street, New York, NY 10027.
Register here.
Join the Lehman Center for American History and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies for a book talk and discussion with Matt Garcia about his new work, Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporations.
Matt Garcia is Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of History, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, and Human Relations at Dartmouth College.
Karl Jacoby specializes in environmental, borderlands, and Native American history, and is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University.
Event Contact Information:
Thai Jones
tsj2001@columbia.edu
Time
(Tuesday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location
International Affairs Building, 420 W. 118 St., New York, NY 10027 Lehman Suite, IAB Room 406
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