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<P>Textuality, Orality, and Literacy in the Anthropology of the Middle East</P>
<P>Abstracts are invited for a panel, to be presented (if accepted) at the
American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco, to be held 19-23
November 2008.</P>
<P>FINAL DUE DATE is March 15th, 2008. Early submission of abstracts is
emphatically encouraged.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Panel topic:</P>
<P>Textuality, Orality, and Literacy in the Anthropology of the Middle East</P>
<P>Whether as 'technology of the intellect' dividing the world's people along a
timeline of development and difference, or as an institutionally-propagated
means of governing populations, literacy and its practices have long commanded
the studied attention of anthropologists. This panel takes inspiration from
recent ethnographic studies that challenge the developmentalist biases and naïve
understanding of language processes common in much early literacy work. We
invite papers that investigate, in ethnographic detail and with theoretical
rigor, the welter of practices and processes that constitute oral and textual
practice in the contemporary Middle East. Presentations might address (but are
not limited to) the following themes:</P>
<P>- dichotomies of myth & history, inscribed text & oral
performance</P>
<P>- forms of authority-making and allegiance vis-à-vis standardizing processes,
scriptural traditions, or legal argument</P>
<P>- pedagogical practice, literacy classrooms, and institutions of
schooling</P>
<P>- circulation of print objects and 'new' media technologies</P>
<P>- linkages between forms of inscribed practice and changing political
community, e.g., genealogy and tribal history, nationalizing movements,
development of minority language presses, diasporic communities</P>
<P>- debates over language socialization, standardization, identity formation
and citizenship</P>
<P>- embodied practices of reading and writing in context</P>
<P>Papers that unsettle classic distinctions between textual and oral practice,
in order to comment on the ideological commitments and pragmatic effects of
language-in-use, are encouraged. With what stakes are textual practices invested
in Lebanese courts or Israeli classrooms? What institutions set the terms of new
historiographies in Syria, and what unexpected consequences emerge in debates
over orthography in Kurdish Turkey? What new public forms emerge around the
circulation of print objects or radio waves? These are but a few of the kinds of
paper themes that could organize presentations on this panel.</P>
<P>Please submit abstract of no more than 250 words, together the following
information to Kelda Jamison</P>
<P>Name</P>
<P>Contact details (email and phone)</P>
<P>Institutional affiliation</P>
<P>Brief description of relevant research experience, if applicable</P>
<P>Panel Organizer:</P>
<P>Kelda Jamison</P>
<P>PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology</P>
<P>University of Chicago</P>
<P>keldaj@uchicago.edu</P></FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>