GRADUATE ASSISTANT POSITION OPENING IN THE GRADGRANTS CENTER

As director of the GradGrants Center, I am seeking a graduate student for the position briefly described below. If you are interested (or if you know a student who might qualify), please send a cover letter and vita to Jody Smith, University Graduate School, Kirkwood Hall 114, 130 S. Woodlawn Ave., Bloomington, Indiana 47405-7104, josmith@indiana.edu, or fax 812-855-4266. If you have questions before submitting materials, please email josmith@indiana.edu.

THE PROPOSAL-WRITING CONSULTANT/TRAINER is one of two graduate assistants who work directly with fellow graduate students in the GradGrants Center, a graduate student service located in the Wells Library-BL, sponsored by The University Graduate School, and available to graduate students of all IU campuses. The two consultants handle the day-to-day operation of the GradGrants Center and share training responsibilities (i.e., presenting or enlisting speakers for workshops, scheduling rooms, preparing visual aids). Our consultants assist students in their search for external funding sources and are available to work one-on-one with graduate students in discussing and critiquing their grant proposals.

QUALIFICATIONS: Required are successful proposal-writing experience, editing skills, teaching experience or experience in planning and presenting special-interest training programs, and the ability and personality to interact well with the public. A one-year commitment to the position is required.

This position provides invaluable opportunity to learn of various funding sources and to improve one's own proposal-writing skills. The experience is extremely valuable to future faculty. The position is a .375% FTE (i.e., 15 hours per week) and is eligible for student health insurance. The salary is $8438 for the academic year; and $2813 for the summer. A fee remission is available. The person hired will work half or all of the summer as arranged with the Director.

Hourly-paid training is available mid-July to July 29 with the graduate assistant appointment beginning the first day of fall classes. The deadline for applications is July 12, 2010.

Jody Smith, Director
The GradGrants Center

Call for Papers: 9th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities

Submission/Proposal Deadline: August 21st, 2010

(Submit well in advance of the above deadline to take advantage of our low early bird registration rate. Click here to see the early bird registration deadline and details!)

 

The 9th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities will be held from January 9 (Sunday) to January 12 (Wednesday), 2011 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village® Beach Resort & Spa in Honolulu, Hawaii. Honolulu is located on the island of Oahu. Oahu is often nicknamed "the gathering place". The 2011 Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities will once again be the gathering place for academicians and professionals from arts and humanities related fields from all over the world..

 Topic Areas (All Areas of Arts and Humanities are Invited)

·         Anthropology

·         American Studies

·         Archeology

·         Architecture

·         Art

·         Art History

·         Art Management

·         Dance

·         English

·         Ethnic Studies

·         Film

·         Folklore

·         Geography

·         Graphic Design

·         History

·         Landscape Architecture

·         Languages

·         Literature

·         Linguistics

·         Music

·         Performing Arts

·         Philosophy

·         Postcolonial Identities

·         Product Design

·         Religion

·         Second Language Studies

·         Speech/Communication

·         Theatre

·         Visual Arts

·         Other Areas of Arts and Humanities

·         Cross-disciplinary areas of the above related to each other or other areas.

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Submitting a Proposal/Paper:

You may submit your paper/proposal by using our online submission system! To use the system, and for detailed information about submitting see:

http://www.hichumanities.org/cfp_artshumanities.htm

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Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities

P.O. Box 75036

Honolulu, Hawaii 96836

humanities@hichumanities.org

http://www.hichumanities.org

University of Pennsylvania: Middle East Center Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce the inauguration of an online working paper series at Penn entitled: NEW HORIZONS: Commentaries on the Modern Middle East. We look forward to receiving your submissions and to forging a dynamic and ongoing scholarly dialogue on modern Iran. We seek short pieces (approx. 500-1000 words) and longer essays (approx. 3000-5000 words) with either a literary, historical, or social scientific (e.g. anthropological, sociological, economic, or political) focus. We ask that submissions to NEW HORIZONS be original works of scholarship that have
not previously been published elsewhere.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/mec/workingpapers

Call for Papers: The Journal of Peacebuilding and Development

Volume 6 Number 2
The Journal of Peacebuilding and Development is calling for papers for Volume 6 Number 2, which is to be published in May 2011. JPD is a tri-annual refereed journal providing a forum for the sharing of critical thinking and constructive action on issues at the intersections of conflict, development, and peace. JPD aims to develop theory-practice and South-North dialogues, foregrounding qualitative methodologies that highlight the micro, hidden impacts of dominant policies and practices. Areas of journal interest include:

• Development policies, processes and outcomes: implications for conflict and peace
• Strategic approaches to building peace and sustainable human development
• Reconciliation and economic justice
• Integrated approaches to statebuilding, peacebuilding and human security
• Governance, human rights and development
• The economics of war and peace
• People-centered development in divided societies
• Social and economic policy for sustaining peace
• Identities and relationships in conflict and development
• Peacebuilding in post 9-11
• Environmental justice and rights-based approaches to development
• Poverty elimination, violence prevention and building a structure of peace
• Development assistance, humanitarian disasters and peacebuilding
• Conflict sensitive policymaking and programming and peace and conflict impact assessment
• Cross-cutting themes: power and empowerment; the role of culture, women, youth, minorities and other marginalized groups; coordi-nation and integration

For more information and examples of past issues, please visit our website, http://www.journalpeacedev.org

Articles submitted to the Journal should be original contributions. Articles should be based on case studies and must link is-sues of peace and/or conflict with some aspect of development. Please indicate clearly if the article is under consideration by another publisher. Articles are read by the journal’s editors as well as by two to four outside reviewers (one or two for briefings).

The following types of submissions will be considered: Full articles: critical case studies and/or thematic discussion and analysis of topical peacebuilding and development themes, 7,000 word maximum, including references and endnotes; Briefings: discussions of 1) training, peacebuilding and intervention strategies and impact, 2) policy review/analysis, or 3) country briefings, 2,500 word maxi-mum; Book reviews: 900 word maximum; Resources: notices of new books, reports, upcoming conferences, videos, e-communications and websites, 150 word maximum; Documents: declarations, communiqués, and other relevant NGO or multilat-eral organisation statements, 1,000 word maximum. Each manuscript must be submitted by e-mail, and if in MSWord format. Any diagrams and maps should be submitted in .JPEG, .EPS or .TIFF format. Tables may appear in the text, but do not apply frames or tints. Author guidelines are posted on website: www.journalpeacedev.org. Copyright of articles published in the Journal rests with the publisher.

Submission deadline: Abstracts to reach JPD by 30 July 2010; articles by 15 September 2010. Articles re-ceived after that date will be considered pending space or for future issues. Authors are advised to send ab-stracts for review first. Please send abstracts and articles to: JPD Managing Editor: jpd.production@gmail.com. For subscription enquiries, please contact: jpd@american.edu.

WWW.JOURNALPEACEDEV.ORG

International Conference of Junior Researchers in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

CALL FOR PAPERS

MediterráneoS

Institute of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (ILC)
CCHS-CSIC, Madrid, December 13-15, 2010

Throughout history, different cultural traditions, all of them with a considerable linguistic diversity, have flourished and converged in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. The International Conference of Junior Researchers in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures seeks to provide a transverse and interdisciplinary framework of discussion and reflection on the intellectual and cultural production of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from its earliest stages to the present. More precisely, this meeting pursues the analysis of the different political, religious and social trends of thought, material culture and artistic, literary and linguistic expressions brought together in this geographical area, highlighting the scope of this blend of traditions within different space-time surroundings.

We warmly welcome proposals regarding the following topics and guidelines:

1. Commercial and economic activity: cultural exchanges generated by trade, mint coin production and currency fluctuations; state control systems: taxation, charity and other bodies.

2. Orthodoxies and heterodoxies: philosophical, religious, magic and superstitious practices and ideas; millenarian and apocalyptic movements; power and religious legitimation.

3. Artistic expressions and material culture as means of transmission and evidence for religious, political and cultural ideologies; tradition and innovation, assimilation and influence.

4. Political processes and theory: effective execution of powers, authoritarian figures, methods of government, hierarchical relations within intra-state and supra-state structures.

5. Language, literature, textual criticism, hermeneutics: critical editions, modern research technologies and methods.

6. Transmission of knowledge and history of science: processes of reception, cultural exchange and transfer among societies in contact.

We encourage junior researchers in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as recent PhD´s (with thesis completed within 5 years prior to event) to participate. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes and may be read in Spanish or English.

Please submit abstracts (300-500 words maximum, including keywords and reference to chosen topic in mail subject), and a brief CV to mediterraneos.abstracts@gmail.com, no later than July 12, 2010.

Conference Committee:
Comisión de jóvenes investigadores del Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo, CCHS-CSIC, Madrid.

Conference Location:
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC.
C/ Albasanz, 26-28. 28037 Madrid, Spain.

--
Marta García Novo
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
C/ Albasanz, 26-28
28037 Madrid
marta.garcianovo@cchs.csic.es 
lucero.marta@gmail.com

Office 2010 media is here

Everyone: Office 2010 (the next version of Office for Windows) is now available to IU students, faculty, and staff, thanks to the IU/Microsoft Campus Agreement.

Office 2010 includes all the programs in Office 2007, and improves on many of the features and quality of prior versions. To get Office 2010, you can either:

* Download Office Professional Plus 2010 at no-cost through IUware:

http://iuware.iu.edu/

- or -

* Purchase a copy of the software media at campus bookstores for a
nominal charge -- for locations and hours, see:

http://kb.iu.edu/data/alme.html

Also, throughout the duration of the Campus Agreement, you can upgrade to the latest versions of Microsoft products at no additional licensing cost.

For more about Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows, see:

http://kb.iu.edu/data/azeu.html

The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations cordially invites you to a discussion on

The Arab World and the
Future of Global Energy Supply:
Realities, Risks, and Prospects

Wednesday, June 30, 2010
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
Rayburn House Office Building B-338/339
Washington, D.C.

Participating specialists include:

Mr. Guy Caruso
Senior Advisor, Energy and National Security Program,
Center for Strategic and International Studies

The Hon. Molly Williamson
Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute
Immediate Past Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy

The Hon. Randa Fahmy-Hudome
President, Fahmy-Hudome International
Former Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy

Ms. Sarah Ladislaw
Senior Fellow, Energy and National Security Program,
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Moderator:
Dr. John Duke Anthony
President and CEO, National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations

R.S.V.P. (Acceptances Only) via email to RSVP@ncusar.org

INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION WHEN YOU R.S.V.P.:

Name:
Title:
Member or Company:
Phone:
Email:

If you have any questions you can call the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations at (202) 293-6466.

If you have already sent an RSVP for this event, you do not need to respond again. Please treat continuing e-mail announcements as reminders of the event, date, time, and place.

Established in 1983, the National Council is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, non-governmental organization. Its mission is educating Americans and others about America's relationships and interests with the Arab and Islamic worlds. A fuller description of the Council's numerous projects, programs, events, publications, and activities can be accessed at ncusar.org. The National Council does not employ or retain a lobbyist.

Please note that this event meets the criteria of a "widely attended event" as defined under the House ethics rules: the event is open to the public and is being actively advertised to an audience of non-Hill staff, with the expectation that more than 25 non-Hill staff will attend. If staffers have further questions, they should contact the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct at (202) 225-7103.

Mr. Guy F. Caruso is a senior adviser in the Energy and National Security Program at CSIS, having served as executive director of the CSIS Strategic Energy Initiative from 1998 to 2000. Prior to rejoining CSIS he served as administrator of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) from July 2002 to September 2008. EIA is the statistical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that provides independent data, forecasts, and analyses regarding energy. Before leading EIA, Caruso had acquired over 30 years of energy experience, with particular emphasis on topics relating to energy markets, policy, and security. His other leadership roles at DOE included director of the Office of Oil and Natural Gas Policy in the Office of Domestic and International Energy Policy and director of the Office of Energy Emergency Policy Evaluation.

Ms. Molly Williamson retired from the Foreign Service with the rank of Career Minister, having served six Presidents. She is currently Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, works as a consultant, serves on multiple boards, and teaches at Johns Hopkins University's Osher Life-Long Learning Institute. From 2005 to 2008, Ms. Williamson was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, with global responsibilities at the nexus of foreign policy and energy policy. From 1999 to 2004, Ms. Williamson was Deputy Assistant Secretary of commerce, with responsibility for advancing trade relations with 86 countries in the middle East, south Asia, Oceania, and Africa.

Ms. Randa Fahmy Hudome has more than twenty years of experience in the international affairs arena, including service in both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government. She is the President of Fahmy Hudome International (FHI), a strategic consulting firm. From 2004 - 2007, with the approval of the U.S. Government, FHI represented the Government of Libya after it agreed to abandon its Weapons of Mass Destruction. Prior to that, Ms. Fahmy-Hudome served as the Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Administration of President George W. Bush, where she analyzed, monitored and assessed energy policy as it related to the impact on foreign policy, national security, and trade promotion and investment, working with the White House, and the Departments of State and Commerce.

Ms. Sarah Ladislaw is a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she concentrates on climate change, the geopolitical implications of energy production and use, energy security, energy technology, and sustainable development. She manages the program's "Opportunity Tipping Point" series, which seeks to explore the policies and activities leading to a low-carbon economic transformation. Ladislaw joined the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2003 as a presidential management fellow, and from 2003 to 2006, she worked in the Office of the Americas in DOE's Office of Policy and International Affairs, where she covered a range of economic, political, and energy issues in North America, the Andean region, and Brazil.

Dr. John Duke Anthony is founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He has recently accepted appointment to the U.S. Department of State's Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy (ACEIP). For the past 35 years Dr. Anthony has been a consultant and regular lecturer on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf for the Departments of Defense and State. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1986, Dr. Anthony is a frequent participant in its study groups on issues related to the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf regions as well as the broader Arab and Islamic world.


About the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations

Founded in 1983, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations is an American non-profit, non-governmental, educational organization dedicated to improving American knowledge and understanding of the Arab world. The Council has been granted public charity status in accordance with Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. All contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. The National Council does not employ or retain a lobbyist.

Vision
The National Council's vision is a relationship between the United States and its Arab partners, friends, and allies that rests on as solid and enduring a foundation as possible. Such a foundation, viewed from both ends of the spectrum, is one that would be characterized by strengthened and expanded strategic, economic, political, commercial, and defense cooperation ties; increased joint ventures; a mutuality of benefit; reciprocal respect for each other's heritage and values; and overall acceptance of each other's legitimate needs, concerns, interests, and objectives.

Mission
The National Council's mission is educational. It seeks to enhance American awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the Arab countries, the Mideast, and the Islamic world. Its means for doing so encompass but are not limited to programs for leadership development, people-to-people exchanges, lectures, publications, an annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference, and the participation of American students and faculty in Arab world study experiences. As a public service, the Council also serves as an information clearinghouse and participant in national, state, and local grassroots outreach to media, think tanks, and select community, civic, educational, religious, business, and professional associations. In these ways the Council helps strengthen and expand the overall Arab-U.S. relationship.

The Mawlana Rumi Review

A journal that publishes articles, reports, review articles and book reviews in English and French. The editor welcomes articles on Rumi’s art of story-telling, poetic imagery, theology, spiritual psychology, ecumenism, erotic spirituality, pedagogy, hermeneutics, ethics, epistemology, prophetology, metaphysics, and cosmology, as well as on the heritage of Rumi’s thought in modern and medieval literary history and interpretation and commentary on his works such as the Mathnawi and Divan-i Shams-i Tabriz.

SUBMISSIONS
All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor:
Dr Leonard Lewisohn
Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies
University of Exeter
Stocker Road
Exeter EX4 4ND
UK
Email: l.lewisohn@exeter.ac.uk

For General Enquires about subscription, book reviews and advertisement in the Review, please write to the

Managing Editor:
Annouchka Bayley
119 Charterhouse Street
London EC1M 6AA
UK
Email: info@mawlanarumireview.com

SUBSCRIPTION RATES
Vol. 1, 2010, 1 issue per year, 220-225 pages;
Institutional rate: US$23 /UK£15 /€17;
Personal rate: US$20/ UK£13 /€14
Postage UK and Europe, add: £2 / €2
Postage to rest of the world, add: US$4/UK£3 /€3

A publication of the Rumi Institute, Near East University, Cyprus, and the Rumi Studies Group of the Institute fo Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK.

  

The Mawlana Rumi Review is edited by Dr Leonard Lewisohn (Lecturer in Persian, IAIS) in coordination with an international team comprising five Assistant Editors:

• Dr Leili Anvar-Chenderoff (INALCO, Paris),
• Professor Franklin Lewis (University of Chicago, Illinois),
• Professor James Morris (Boston College, Massachusetts),
• Dr Shahram Pazouki (Tehran University), and
• Dr Muhammad Isa Waley (British Library UK)

The review is served by an Advisory Council consisting of:

• Professor William Chittick (State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA)
• Professor Carl Ernst (University of North Carolina, USA)
• Dr Husayn Muhyiddin Ghomshei (Independent Scholar, Tehran)
• Professor Talat Sait Halman, (Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey)
• Professor Mahmut Erol Kiliç, (Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey)
• Professor Jawid Mojaddedi (Rutgers University, New Jersey)
• Dr Alan Williams (University of Manchester, UK)
• Professor Ian Netton (University of Exeter, UK)
• The Poetry Editor is Professor Paul Losensky (Indiana University).

Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

__
For six decades, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has prepared the nation’s best minds to meet its most important challenges.


The Woodrow Wilson Fellowships responded to a shortage of college faculty at the conclusion of World War II by offering talented students the opportunity to attend doctoral programs and begin college teaching careers.

As college enrollments swelled in the latter half of the 20th century, the Woodrow Wilson program trained generations of faculty, creating a well-known fellowship and becoming a hallmark of academic excellence.

Over time, the Foundation’s fellowships have evolved to address emerging needs, serve specific populations underrepresented in the academy, strengthen designated fields, and support key stages in professorial careers. The Woodrow Wilson Foundation has awarded fellowships to more than 20,000 scholars, who now include 13 Nobel Laureates, two Fields Medalists in mathematics, 14 Pulitzer Prize winners, 35 “genius grant” MacArthur Fellows, two U.S. Poets Laureate, and 21 recipients of Presidential and national medals.

Today, Woodrow Wilson seeks to build upon this legacy of excellence, maintaining its historic commitments and attacking one of the nation’s most urgent contemporary challenges: the pervasive achievement gap between Americans, by race and income.

Using the prestige of our historic fellowships as well as harnessing new resources, the Foundation has created what we hope will be an influential fellowship to recruit exceptionally able men and women to careers in high school teaching. These Fellows, training in exemplary teacher education programs, will be prepared to teach in low-income communities and high-need schools.

Through this work, the Foundation seeks to dignify the teaching profession, encourage the most outstanding students to choose teaching as a career, and improve the quality of teacher education programs. At the same time, the Foundation will engage in initiatives designed to improve teacher education practice and policy.

Current programs and research address educational needs in three areas:

Fellowships
Policy
Practice

Employment Opportunities at the World Learning Institute

Please check out this list of employment opportunities.

Call for Papers: Workshop on Language, Literacy, and the Social Construction of Authority in Islamic Societies

 Stanford University, March 3-4, 2011

(Abstract Submission Deadline: 09/01/2010)

The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University invites submission of paper abstracts for a workshop on Language, Literacy, and the Social Construction of Authority in Islamic Societies. The workshop will take place on March 3-4 2011 in Stanford (California, USA) and is a joint project of the Abbasi Program and the Middle East –Mediterranean Studies Program at Sciences Po in Paris. Travel and lodging arrangements for the workshop participants will be provided.

The workshop will focus on the processes underlying the social construction of authority in Islamic societies and the way those processes have been affected by issues of language and the development of literacy from 17th century and onwards in the context of peripheries as well as the core regions (specifically, West Africa, the Caucasus, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East). Particular topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• issues concerning print, manuscript and oral tradition
• rise of new media (such as internet) and language
• the ulama's retention of authority through reassertion or, in some cases, reinvention of their relationships to classical discourses
• the emergence of new spheres of religious authority beyond the ulama, and how this is related to evolutions in language and literacy
• the production of Modern Standard Arabic out of classical literary Arabic and its relationship to rise in literacy and consequent devolution of religious authority
• the politics of languages of education in West Africa, between Arabic and vernaculars
• the fate of Arabic as a the universal Islamic language more generally across various regions
• the rise of English, French, and Russian as authoritative languages of Muslim discourse in colonial and post-colonial settings
• the development of Urdu as the lingua franca of Muslim communication in India and its relationship to reformist madrasas in north India
• relationships between nationalisms, languages, and universal versus local religious communities

Please submit a brief abstract (not to exceed 300 words) by September 1st 2010 via the online secure form available at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/islamic_studies/socconst.fb. The abstract should specify the proposed paper topic, major argument(s) of the paper and the methodology used. Participants will be notified by September 30th 2010. Complete papers are to be submitted by January 14th 2011.

A copy of this CfP is available online at http://islamicstudies.stanford.edu/CfP0311.pdf. For questions, please contact Dr. Burcak Keskin-Kozat at burcak@stanford.edu

Contact:
Dr. Burcak Keskin-Kozat, Associate Director
The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
Stanford University
Email: burcak@stanford.edu
Website: http://islamicstudies.stanford.edu/

Two Employment Search Engines

-
-
http://www.devex.com/  

Devex began as a student project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the year 2000. Today, their social enterprise has become the largest provider of business intelligence and recruitment services to the development community; serving a majority of the world’s leading donor agencies, companies, NGOs and development professionals.

With a mission to bring greater efficiency to international development, their global team works to provide innovative products and services to address the needs of each member of their development community. If you are a development professional or organization working in the field of international development, humanitarian relief and global health then this site is fo you!

http://www.usajobs.gov/
 
USAJOBS is the official job site of the US Federal Government.
It's your one-stop source for Federal jobs and employment information.

The Graduate School Foreign Language Exam (GSFLE) Date is Approaching

This exam establishes reading competency in lieu of taking the graduate reading courses for French, German, or Spanish. This fall's dates are: 

• Friday, August 27, 2010 8:30 am, 10 am, 1:30 pm, 3 pm BEST Testing Room (F.F. 014)
• Friday, September 3, 2010 8:30 am, 10 am, 1:30 pm, 3 pm BEST Testing Room (F.F. 014)

Please visit the GSFLE website for more information.

 

Iconoclasm: The Breaking and Making of Images

University of Toronto, March 17–19, 2011
Keynote Address by Carol Mavor (Manchester) (others to be confirmed)

The 22nd annual conference of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto in March 2011 will focus on the idea of Iconoclasm, the breaking of images and the making of icons.

The word “iconoclasm” is weighted with a long history of religious significance, from the Byzantine war on religious icons of the 8th- and 9th-centuries and the Protestant reformation in the 16th century, to the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan in the 21st century. But the idea of destroying or defacing images, especially images that convey aspects of cultural dominance or, conversely, pose a threat to that dominance, is as often political as religious: think of the Chinese Cultural Revolution or graffiti moustaches. Political iconoclasm, unlike religious iconoclasm, does not object to representation as such but rather to certain images that have been granted the status of icons. However, any act of desecrating symbols of authority itself often takes on iconic status: take, for example, photos of the pulling down of statues from Romania to Iraq.

Iconoclasm need not be visual and material and can also take abstract and intellectual forms. Subversive, transgressive, blasphemous writing is also iconoclastic in inspiration and function. Moreover, the power associated with images in general and iconic images in particular has often inspired writers to subdue the power of images or to wrest it for themselves. The ekphrastic contest between literature, or verbal representation, and images, or visual representation, is very often iconoclastic in nature.

Contemporary media culture floods us with images and alters their impact, creating ever more sophisticated organized cults around them, such as celebrity, high art, advertising, the news, etc. Just as the word “icon” has acquired new meanings, ranging from signs for computer applications to logos and celebrity, so, too, iconoclasm, the urge to deface, destroy, or alter images, takes on wholly new meanings.

We wish to examine a wide range of iconoclastic moments in order to understand the political, ethical, and aesthetic stakes involved in challenging the signifying power of the iconic image. Is there a tradition of iconoclasm or is the modern icon and thus modern iconoclasm something new? Is iconoclasm even possible, or does it always participate in the forces of iconicity, creating, in effect, iconoclastic icons? Subjects that are of interest to us include but are in no way limited to:

— Classical/Antiquity (pre-5th century CE)

o Idol Worship and Biblical Images

o Mythology: Symbols, Images of Gods, Heroes, etc.

o Epic Narratives and the Performance of Lyric Poetry

o Ekphrastic imaginings

— Medieval (5th–15th centuries)

o Theories of the Imagination and Images; representations of other worlds

o Sight/Insight

o Iconography; religious iconoclasms and iconoclasts

o Mystery/Miracle plays

— Early Modern (15th–17th centuries)

o The Politics of Appropriation, Assimilation, Domination in Conquest and Colonial documents

o Man and his God: The Vatican; The Reformation; the Council of Trent;

o Staging the World: early modern drama

o Iconic Genres: The “invention” of the Novel; Poetry and the re-telling of myth and religion

— 18th and 19th centuries

o Innovations in Media and Technology

o Ignitions of the Enlightenment

o The rise of Decolonisation and Postcolonialism

o The turn to Revolution, the pull of Evolution

o The Gothic, the Sublime, and Romance

— 20th century to present:

o Iconoclastic genres: The reinvention of the novel (re-imagining the novel-as-icon); Poetry’s Image/Imagination (Dadaism, Futurism, Concrete Poetry, etc.)

o Magical Realism, Surrealism, Realism, the Fantastic

o Iconography, Fetish Images, Pop Culture, Film

o Trauma, Terrorism, Disasters, Ruins

o Icons in the Digital Age

— Theoretical Concerns

o Negative Dialectics; the question of the Negative

o The Epistemology of the Iconic Closet: Queer Icons and the Reinvention of Tradition

o Moving through and beyond Ekphrasis

o Benjaminian Auras

o Unstaging the World: “poor theatre”; “theatre of cruelty”; “holy theatre”; postdramatic performance art; Theatre of the Opressed, etc.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by September 10, 2010 to iconoclasm.2011@gmail.com. Include full name, email, affiliation, status (student, faculty, independent scholar), a 50-word bio, and AV requirements.

Please check our website for updates: www.chass.utoronto.ca/complitstudents/complitconference

UITS Brown Bags/Lunch & Learn in June

Learn some new tricks to increase productivity by attending a FREE brown bag presentation from noon to 1 pm. These sessions are FREE for all and registration is not needed. The sessions will not be hands-on, but interaction with the instructor is encouraged. Join us at the following events this month:

Tools for Productivity with Word
Wednesday, June 16th, University College, Lower Level - IUPUI

Outlook 2007: Scheduling for Success
Tuesday, June 22nd, Education, Room 2277 - IUB

PDF Portfolios in Acrobat 9
Tuesday, June 22nd, Business, Room CG2063 - IUB

Excel: Tips & Tricks
Wednesday, June 30th, University College, Lower Level - IUPUI

To learn more about Brown Bag presentations and to sign up for an email reminder, go to:

http://ittraining.iu.edu/brownbag