Heading home is always a highlight and soon enough, I will be in sweet Hyde Park drowning in snow, slush, Powell's and Istria. Life will be as it ought to be. As it once was.
However, before that, I am participating in - it readily appears - a wonderful conference at the University of Pennsylvania. I am going to try and lay out (what will be a chapter eventually) my understanding of the position prophecy holds in the imaginations of middle-class Pakistanis. I will also talk about Zaid Hamid.
Details on the conference:
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FRIDAY, 18 February, 2011
1:30-1:45: OPENING REMARKS
* Kathleen Hall, South Asia Center Director
* Daud Ali, Chair, Department of South Asia Studies1:45-2:45: VIOLENCE, SECURITY, MEMORY
* Elizabeth Kolsky, “The Archival Remains of a Frontier Rebel”
* James Caron, “Transnational Memory in the Plains of Layla”2:45-3:00: Break
3:00-4:30: STATE, NATION, HISTORY
* Kamran Asdar Ali, “Communists in a Muslim Land: Cultural Debates in Pakistan's Early Years”
* Lutz Rzehak, “Historiography and Localism in Modern Tajikistan”
* Morgan Liu, “Post-Cold War Reflections on Central Asian Imaginaries of the State”6:30-9:00: SHADOW ANTHROPOLOGY: a play reading with Rick Mitchell, and dinner
(ARCH Auditorium, 3601 Locust Walk)
...............................................SATURDAY, 19 February, 2011
...............................................9:30-10:45: EXPRESSION AND AGENCY
* Saadia Toor, “Feminist Poetry and Protest in Pakistan”
* Iftikhar Dadi, Title TBA
* Margaret Mills, “Afghan Women between Victimhood and Agency”10:45-11: Break
11-12:30: TRANSCENDENTAL IMAGINATIONS, PAST AND FUTURE
* Manan Ahmed, “Prophetic Time #FAIL”
* Jo-Ann Gross, “Between Memory and History: The Interplay between Orality and Textuality in the Funerary Narratives of Nasir-i Khusraw from Badakhshan”
* Jamal Elias, “Imaging and Imagining Religious Virtue”12:30: CLOSING REMARKS
The conference will be held at
Room 245 (2nd floor)
Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Locust Walk/Walnut Street
Do come by and say hi!
Love the title of the paper, send us a copy! Also, hai, Powells.