With an introduction by Professor Nouf Al-Thani, join us as Professor Karine Walther explores how American art and literature reinterpreted representations of the Orient, and Professor Nadya Sbaiti examines the enduring relevance of Orientalism through the lens of Gérôme’s artwork. The session concludes with a moderated discussion on how these perspectives reshape our understanding of Orientalism today.
Location: Georgetown University in Qatar, room 1A12 (First Floor)
Dr. Agnès Callamard is Secretary General at Amnesty International. She leads the organization’s human rights work and is its chief spokesperson. She is responsible for providing overall leadership of the International Secretariat, including setting the strategic direction for the organization and managing relations with Amnesty International’s national entities. Agnès has been a prominent figure in the human rights world for decades. In 2016, she was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary killings. Along with her UN work, Agnès was also the Director of Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University in New York. Previously, she was Executive Director of the freedom of expression organization Article 19. She returns to Amnesty after twenty years having previously held the role of Chef de Cabinet for then Secretary General Pierre Sané. As a leading advocate for freedom of expression, a feminist, and an anti-racism activist, she pushes out the frontiers of rights through her scholarship and advocacy.
The talk will focus on Dr. Mujibur Rehman's book, Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Dr. Mujibur Rehman is a faculty at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi. He is the author of, Shikw-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims (Simon and Schsuter, 2024), which is now a bestseller in Amazon. His previous publications include, Rise of Saffron Power: Reflections on Indian Politics (Routledge, 2018) and Communalism in postcolonial India: Changing Contours (Routledge 2016). Its second edition has a foreword by Romila Thapar. He is also series editor of Peter Lang for books on Elections and Democracy series and is now editing a volume on the 2024 Indian Elections. Dr. Rehman writes columns and reviews for major Indian dailies.
Location: Georgetown University in Qatar, Room 0A13.
Join us for a screening of Killer of Sheep, a poignant portrait of working-class life in 1970s Los Angeles, and Residue, a moving reflection on gentrification and memory in Washington, DC, followed by a discussion with Richard Peña, Emeritus Professor of Film and Media Studies at Columbia University and former Director of the New York Film Festival.
Date: Sunday, February 9, 2025
Time: 4:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Venue: Room 0A11, Ground Floor, Georgetown University in Qatar
4:00 p.m. – Killer of Sheep
6:15 p.m. – Residue
Prepare to be immersed in a groundbreaking celebration of Black storytelling. The 2025 Black Literary Festival at Georgetown University Qatar will ignite a literary revolution, uniting visionary academics, trailblazing media professionals, and genre-defying authors from across the globe.
In celebration of the Black History Month 2025 theme, “African Americans and Labor,” announced by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the GU-Q Black Literary Festival will spotlight the contributions and labor of Black Writers celebrating their resilience, creativity, and enduring impact while examining how their work has chronicled social justice movements and continues to challenge, inspire, and reshape the global literary landscape.
What does it mean to inhabit urban space with others? This talk explores how human residents of UAE cities, the vast majority of whom are not able to settle permanently, produce home alongside and through their interactions with cats, birds, plants, and each other, within the context of ever-changing urban landscapes. We explore, through “cat walks” and other movements within urban space, the micro-architectures of care through which urban residents create relationships with each other and stake claim to the city. More broadly, the talk uses the Gulf context to encourage a rethinking of what homemaking means, and an unsettling of binaries between migrant and nonmigrant experiences of precarity and (non)belonging.
Neha Vora is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching interests include diasporas and migration. She is the author of Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2013) and Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar (Stanford University Press, 2018).
Location: Georgetown University in Qatar, Room 0A13.
Join us to hear readings from the children's authors Dr. Darius Walker and Nicole Alexander. They will be reading from their books "The Ship and the Jungle" and "Kaida's Magical Naptime". We will also have various children's activities such as face painting and bookmark coloring.
This event will take place at the green lawn by the pool side at the St. Regis Hotel, Doha
Join us for the first Qalam event of 2025, featuring award-winning novelist Kamila Shamsie. Over the past three events, Kamila, our inaugural Writer-in-Residence, brought the work of other great writers to life with her signature insight. Now, her own storytelling takes center stage.
The event will take place in the Library at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Join us for the Here I Am play on Wednesday, February 19, at 5:30 p.m., in the auditorium at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Mélisande Short-Colomb’s acclaimed one-person play will be staged at GU-Q, marking the first live presentation of the work outside the U.S. An original production of the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics at Georgetown University, co-founded by Derek Goldman and Cynthia Schneider, the play traces Mélisande’s ancestral journey through 11 generations of maternal grandmothers and their connection to Georgetown’s history.