2019-2020 Annual Lecture Series

The Inheritance of ISIS

Dr. Faisal Devji

Thu, 19 September 2019, 6:30 PM
SFU Harbour Centre Campus Vancouver, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Segal Centre Room 1400

While both scholarly and journalistic analyses of Muslim militancy see it emerging out of a longer history of Islam’s politicization, I want to argue that exactly the reverse is true, with much of the violence that characterizes contemporary terrorism deriving from the refusal of politics. The destruction of profane Muslim authority in colonial times was matched by efforts to reconceive Islam itself as a form of social self-management by means of divine law, one that reserved sovereignty for God alone. The problem of what came to be called Islamism, then, was how to produce a society without sovereignty. The inheritance of ISIS is one consequence of the failure of this struggle.

Persian Carpets: Nation as a Transnational Commodity

Dr. Minioo Moallem

Thu, 10 October 2019, 6:30 PM
SFU Harbour Centre Campus Vancouver, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Segal Centre Room 1400

In Persian Carpets: the Nation As a Transnational Commodity Moallem tracks the Persian carpet as an exotic and mythological object, as a commodity, and as an image from mid-nineteenth-century England to contemporary Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Using an innovative interdisciplinary and transnational feminist approach, Moallem follows the journey of this single commodity-which crosses the boundaries of private and public, religious and secular, cultural and economic, modern and traditional, national and diasporic- to tell the story of transnational interconnectivities in the making of informal imperialism and consumer capitalism. In a highly original theoretical move and through the study of the specific example of Persian carpets, Moallem brings representational practices into conversation with issues of labor, affects, and materiality.

Productive Discomforts: Sa'da, Blackness, and Palestine

Dr. Sherene Seikaly

Thu, February 13, 2020, 6:30 PM
SFU Harbour Centre Campus Vancouver, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Segal Centre Room 1400

In 2014, Israel unleashed another precedent setting assault on the Palestinian people. As one of the world’s most technologically advanced armies bombarded one of the world’s most overcrowded and enclosed spaces, a St. Louis police officer gunned down an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown. A bridge took shape across the miles separating these two places: the Gaza Strip and Ferguson. Drawing on the shared experience of captive communities becoming living laboratories, people shared tactics, strategies, and ideas. They nourished the resurgence of a longer trajectory and history of Black-Palestine solidarity. This solidarity, as both a possibility and a commitment, is an invitation to ask difficult questions and foster productive discomforts. Foremost among these is the history of Arab anti-blackness, which has been too easily dismissed as either an European import or an always- already essence of Arab social life. Eschewing both these approaches and embracing race as a critical lens, I trace the story of a woman named Sa’da to explore blackness, enslavement, and servitude in twentieth century Palestine

What is the New Middle East?

Dr. James Gelvin

Thu, March 19, 2020, 6:30 PM
SFU Harbour Centre Campus Vancouver, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Segal Centre Room 1400

The end of the cold war, the American invasion of Iraq, and the Arab uprisings of 2010-11 unleashed forces in the Middle East that have yet to be contained. Some states failed; others expanded repression. The region has become more militarized and sectarianized. The end of American hegemony unleashed a free-for-all for regional influence, pitting Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran against each other in proxy wars and interstate interventions. In the meantime, human security in the region has plummeted, threatening the lives and welfare of millions. This talk will examine the origins, dynamics, and prospects for a region in turmoil.