2018 – Oceanic Circularities: Arts, Ideologies, and Identities in the Indian Ocean

A mosaic collage of different commodities traded across the Indian Ocean and icons of religion, as well as portraits of people living along the Indian Ocean

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Opening and welcomeDr. Ahmad Dallal, Dean of Georgetown University in Qatar

Keynote: “The Surface of Things: A History of Photography from the Swahili Coast”Dr. Prita Meier, New York University

Panel 1: Socialism and Socialist Legacies

“Ethiopia and Yemen: A Tale in Three Acts”Dr. Bahru Zewde, Addis Ababa University

“Exposed Spies, Conspiring Sheikhs and Flying Cattle: Conflating Socialism, Superpower Interests and Somali Segmentary Society in the 1970s”Dr. Radoslav Yordanov, Columbia University

“Rural Modernities: Comparing Socialisms and Postsocialisms in China, India, and Tanzania”Dr. Uday Chandra, Georgetown University in Qatar

“The Party and the Gun: African Liberation, Asian Comrades and Socialist Political Technologies” – Dr. Harry Verhoeven, Georgetown University in Qatar

Panel 2: Modernity and Islam

“Religion as Discourse: Conversion and Commitment to Jihad in South Africa”Dr. Abdulkader Tayob, University of Cape Town

“Itineraries of Islam: Law, Constitutionalism, and Translation across Asia”Dr. Iza Hussin, Cambridge University

“Body, Worker, Object: The Radical Feminist Aesthetics of Mahashweta Devi’s Breast Stories”Dr. Paromita Chakrabarti, University of Mumbai

Panel 3: Arts and Architecture

“Indian Films in East Africa Theaters: Circuits of Distribution and Community Engagement” – Dr. Laura Fair, Michigan State University

“Cold War Realties, Postcolonial Fantasies in Tanzania” Dr. Abdullahi Ibrahim, University of Missouri

“Slavery, Oil, and Abolition in Qatar in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s” Dr. Ahmad Sikainga, Ohio State University

“Samhani: Narrating Justice and Clemency in Zanzibar” Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin, Independent Writer

“Reading of Arab Perceptions of the Indian Ocean: The Kingdom of Women” – Abdallah Al Bashir, University of Khartoum