[Bilimsel Haber] CfP: Textuality, Orality, and Literacy in the Anthropology of the Middle East (San Francisco, 19-23 November 2008)

[Onur Inal]

Textuality, Orality, and Literacy in the Anthropology of the Middle East

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.

FINAL DUE DATE is March 15th, 2008. Early submission of abstracts is
emphatically encouraged.

 

Panel topic:

Textuality, Orality, and Literacy in the Anthropology of the Middle East

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:

- dichotomies of myth & history, inscribed text & oral performance

- forms of authority-making and allegiance vis-à-vis standardizing
processes, scriptural traditions, or legal argument

- pedagogical practice, literacy classrooms, and institutions of schooling

- circulation of print objects and 'new' media technologies

- 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

- debates over language socialization, standardization, identity formation
and citizenship

- embodied practices of reading and writing in context

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.

Please submit abstract of no more than 250 words, together the following
information to Kelda Jamison

Name

Contact details (email and phone)

Institutional affiliation

Brief description of relevant research experience, if applicable

Panel Organizer:

Kelda Jamison

PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology

University of Chicago

keldaj at uchicago.edu

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