Graduate Student Colloquium Abstracts 2006-2007
Tristan Mabry, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science
"Sacred Language, National Tongue, Sovereign State: Language and Legitimacy in the Muslim World"
This paper weighs the competing arguments of "Muslim exceptionalism" literature in regard to a cross-regional set of cases including Iraq's Kurds, China's Uyghurs, Pakistan's Sindhis, India's Kashmiris, Indonesia's Acehnese and the Philippines' Moros. It identifies four separate theoretical claims: 1) Muslim societies are exceptional in their resistance to nationalism; 2) Muslim societies are exceptional in their resistance to democracy; 3) Arab societies are exceptional in their resistance to nationalism; 4) Arab societies are exceptional in their resistance to democracy. Based on international fieldwork and interviews with the leadership of separatist parties and organizations representing each case, this paper rejects the first two claims: Muslim societies are unexceptional in regard to both nationalism and democracy. In regard to Arab exceptionalism, this paper suggests that public education in Arab countries does suppress the development of ethnonational identities. This is effected by suppressing the standardization of vernacular languages and insisting on literacy in a formal Arabic that is detached from the mother tongues of separate and unique Arab peoples. This insistence is justified by the sacred status of the language. Finally, this paper suggests that the weakness of ethno-national identities in Arab countries weakens the legitimacy of purported Arab nation-states, and thereby stymies the consolidation of democratic institutions. Hence, Arab societies are exceptional in their resistance to both nationalism and democracy.
Ching-jen Wang, PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
"Writing Death: Psychoanalysis and the Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Kuni"
This paper deals with the issue of “death” and “deathness” in two works, al-Khusuf and al-Majus, by the renowned Libyan author Ibrahim al-Kuni. Death is not merely a state of motionlessness or non-existence in these texts, but rather, a phenomenon that encapsulates the entire time and space stretching out before and after the occurrence of “deathness.” Drawing upon the psychoanalytical theories of Jung and Freud in regards to death, this paper will analyze the literary function of writing death in al-Kuni’s work.
Mikiya Koyagi, PhD Student in History
"Creating Future Soldiers and Mothers: Gender and Physical Education in Modern Iran, 1921-1941"
In the early twentieth century, Iranian nationalists advocated physical education as the panacea for their suffering homeland. They considered physical education as the ultimate way of creating physically and morally sound youths, without whom their nation would disintegrate. This paper discusses physical education under Reza Shah from the coup he led in 1921 to his forced abdication in 1941. Backed by the centralized state, Reza Shah’s reign witnessed a rapid development of physical education, which was a wider trend observed in other locations around the same period. This paper finds the justification for promoting physical education in nationalists’ scientific understanding of the body and the mind, an understanding based on physiology. Essentially, it argues, physical education of the period attempted to create morally desirable youths for the state through the encouragement of various physical activities such as modern sports and scouting. Male physical education was purported to inculcate future soldiers with desirable values such as patriotism, uniformity, will power, competitiveness, and cooperativeness. While creating useful soldiers through physical education served the nationalist goal of strengthening the nation with relatively little turmoil, female physical education was more controversial mainly because of its perceived violations of chastity. In justifying female physical education, Reza Shah and his supporters, advertised its necessity in order to create of physically and morally sound future mothers who would bear healthy children. At the same time, being influenced by the global trend, some women advocated female physical education for the sake of equality between the two sexes and emphasized womanhood as opposed to motherhood.
Erika Tapp, PhD Candidate in History of Art
"Colonial Visions: Spanish Views of Morocco, 1860-1920"
This paper will look at the relationship between Spain and Morocco as it developed from the mid-nineteenth century through the early years of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. Art and architecture were used by the Spanish to shape and define their colonial relationship with Morocco. Though fundamentally a colonizer-colonized relationship, it was radically different than the kind typified by France and Morocco or Britain and India. The works of Mariano Fortuny, a nineteenth-century painter, and Carlos Ovilo y Castelo, an early twentieth-century architect, will be presented as exemplars of the unique position of the Spanish colonial government. Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish court painter, was sent to Morocco to document the Hispano-Moroccan conflicts between 1860 and 1862. His works, most importantly a large canvas entitled *The Battle of Tetuán*, were used as propaganda by the Spanish government. In contrast to the works of nineteenth-century French painters, Fortuny's works had an overt political and militaristic goal, which required a far more nuanced and realistic view of Morocco. Carlos Ovilo's planning and building projects, completed in virtually all of the cities of the Spanish Protectorate, were the directive of the Spanish government in Madrid. By 1912, after centuries of colonization throughout the world, the Spanish approach to colonial rule was highly evolved and sophisticated in comparison to the other European colonizers. Ovilo's refined and delicate approach to building in Morocco embodied this approach.
Rami Regavim, PhD Candidate in History
"Old Pleasure, New Pleasures – Opium and the Modernization of Iran"
Opium has been produced and consumed in Iran since antiquity, but production was rather limited and consumption restricted mainly to medicinal purposes by eating. Only since the mid-1860s opium has become a cash crop in Iran and the expansion of cultivation and production throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century has made Iran one of the major opium producers. However, along with the profits came also a sharp rise in leisure-related consumption in Iran, and, although the smoking method was only introduced in Iran for the first time during the 1880s, it quickly became very popular. After the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1906, the concern among Iranian new elites regarding the expanding use of opium was translated into an effort to reduce its use. This was part of a larger project to recreate the Iranian society in the image of modern “civilized” society. But this effort was rather ambiguous as the government was reluctant to curtail one of its major sources of income. The same ambiguity characterized the foreign policy of opium. On the one hand, Iran was the first opium producing government to join the international effort to limit production and distribution of opium and the first producing country to sign The Hague Opium Convention in 1912. But on the other hand it was reluctant to actually apply the terms of the convention for several decades. General historiography of Iran regards the late 19th century and the early 20th century as the beginning of a period of reform and modernization. Thus, both the expansion and modernization of opium cultivation, production and distribution and the efforts to limit this process, both the expansion of opium abuse and the social vilification of it – are all part of the modernization project. I will analyze this dynamic perception of modernization vis-à-vis opium in Iran. Examining issues such as the medicalization of the opium “problem”, the role of opium in Iran’s foreign policy, and the process of legal criminalization of opium, will enable us to contribute to the growing literature that explores the cultural meaning of modernization in Iran.
Adnan Zulfiqar, PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
"Qur'ânic Orality: The Implications Of Audience And Performance On Qur'ânic Meaning"
This paper seeks to examine what impact the Qur'an's oral dimension, and its accompanying elements, have on Qur'anic meaning. An effort is made to draw conclusions about meaning in the Qur'an by charting a path between reception theory and formalist reading. Particular attention will be paid to the manner in which Qur'anic language reveals its orality and the extent to which the Qur'an requires an appreciation of its original audience for its meaning to be appropriately conveyed. With this in mind, the paper proposes an original approach to the Qur'an which may facilitate a greater understanding of the text.