Writers’ perspectives on exile and diaspora

Description

An event by the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group

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Speakers

• Katharina Galor (Hirschfeld Visiting Assistant Professor, Brown University)
• Sa’ed Atshan (Associate Professor Department Chair, Peace & Conflict Studies, Swarthmore College)
• Menna Agha (Assistant Professor, Azrieli School of Architecture)

Moderator

Christos Nikolaou (University of Cambridge)

Abstract

What is the relationship between exile and affective spaces? Especially when it comes to contested spaces, emotions are intertwined with the political economy that produces them. At times, this is linked to nostalgia for long-gone spaces, such as in the Aswan Dam in Nubia. At others, there are overlapping traumas which interplay with structures of oppression, such as in the relationship between Israelis, Palestinians, and Germans in Berlin. This panel seeks to elucidate the complexities which unfold when exile occurs, as well as how modernity and colonial traumas manifest in contexts of exile.

About the speakers

Katharina Galor is an art historian and archaeologist specializing in the visual and material culture of Israel-Palestine. She received her B.A., M.A. and Diplôme d’Études Approfondi in Art History and Archaeology from the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France and her Ph.D. in Old World Art and Archaeology from Brown University. In addition to teaching at Brown, she also taught at the Hebrew University and at the Ecole biblique et archéologique française in Jerusalem; at Tufts University and at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US; and at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She has been a fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, at the Berlin Antike-Kolleg, the Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg, the Chronoi Center of the Berlin Einstein Foundation, and most recently she was the Marcus Bierich Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.

Dr Sa’ed Atshan is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He previously served as an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Senior Research Scholar in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Atshan earned a joint PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies (2013) and MA in Social Anthropology (2010) from Harvard University, a Master in Public Policy (MPP) (2008) from the Harvard Kennedy School, and BA (2006) from Swarthmore College. His areas of research include: a) contemporary Palestinian society and politics, b) global LGBTQ social movements, and c) Christian minorities in the Middle East. 

Dr Menna Agha is an architect and researcher who has recently been coordinating the spatial justice agenda at the Flanders Architecture Institute in Belgium. She joins the Azrieli School to promote pedagogy and research in the newly established area of Design and Spatial Justice. She is cross-appointed at Carleton University’s Institute for African Studies. Menna holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Antwerp, and a Master of Arts in Gender and Design from Köln International School of Design. In 2019/2020, she was the Spatial Justice Fellow and a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon. She is a third-generation displaced Fadicha Nubian, a legacy that infuses her research interests in race, gender, space, and territory. 

 

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