Arab and Jewish Diasporas

Visuality in a Minor Key: The Photographic Work of Anna Sherbany (2006)

by Janice Cheddie

Catalogue Essay for the photographic Exhibition Beyond Spoken Word. Solo Exhibition by Artist Anna Sherbany. Robert Phillips Gallery, Kingston University, UK, 2006. Artist Website: www.annasherbany.com

The essay discusses the work of the British photographer Anna Sherbany through the work of the French philosophers... more The essay discusses the work of the British photographer Anna Sherbany through the work of the French philosophers Deleuze and Felix Guattari using their text ‘Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature’ (1986), to discuss the concepts of 'deterrotialisation'. Sherbany is located at the margins of many discourses, as an Iraqi Jew living in a Britain within a European Jewish diaspora, a minority within contemporary Britain. These varying displacements and multiple diasporic experiences have formed part of the raw materials of her practice and have been transformed into visual acts of deterritorialisation of dominant languages. Her work references and challenges these multiple perspectives and like Deleuze and Guattari's notion of a minor literature, this deterroritalisation of dominant modes of visuality is not a mode of practice concerned with personal quest for cultural or political identity. Rather Sherbany articulates the interconnections between the social, aesthetic and the discursive.
Key Words: Anna Sherbany; Philosophy, Vision and Visuality Research; Iraqi-Jewish Diaspora; Art Theory; Photography; British Photographers, Diaspora

La Bibliothèque d’Eléphantine (Egypte)

by PD Dr. Ursula Schattner-Rieser

in: Bibliothèques Hebraïca – Judaïca, Tsafon 56 (2008-2009),  13-27.

Palestinian Women Filmmakers in the New World Diaspora

by Terri Ginsberg

forthcoming (in Arabic and English) in Palestinian Women Filmmakers: Strategies of Representation, Conditions of Production, ed. Alia Arasoughly (Shashat/Birzeit UP)

Von der hispanidad zum Panarabismus: Globale Verflechtungen in Argentiniens Nationalismen

by Michael Goebel

in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 37 (2011), pp. 523-558.

The article explores the connections of various forms of nationalism in Argentina with Arab countries and pan-Arabism,... more The article explores the connections of various forms of nationalism in Argentina with Arab countries and pan-Arabism, focusing on the 1960s. Contrary to much of the existing scholarship on Argentine nationalism, it maintains that nationalist ideas and movements were not necessarily undermined, but frequently fed by transnational exchange. Analyzing how cultural analogies between Argentina and Arab countries were construed on the basis of pre-existing notions of Argentina as a Hispanic country, the article eventually arrives at broader theoretical considerations about the advantages and predicaments of transnational history.

'Arisen from Deep Slumber': Transnational Politics and Competing Nationalisms among Syrian Immigrants in Argentina, 1900-1922

by Steven Hyland Jr.

published in the'Journal of Latin American Studies,' August 2011

What Does Historical Numismatics Suggest About the Monetary History of Khazaria in the Ninth Century?-Question Revisited

by Roman Kovalev

Creating Khazar Identity through Coins: The Special Issue Dirhams of 837/8

by Roman Kovalev

The Surreality of Community: Frédéric Brenner's Diaspora: Homelands In Exile

by John Ricco

Vague Spaces

by Vincent Miller

Co-authored with Phil Carney (2009) Chapter 2 in Strange Spaces: Explorations in Mediated Obscurity (Jansson, Andre; Lagerkvist, Amanda eds.). Ashgate Publications.

In this chapter we engage with the complex relationships between space, knowledge and power through a consideration of... more In this chapter we engage with the complex relationships between space, knowledge and power through a consideration of vagueness, vague practices and vague spaces. We argue that interlinked modern processes of the state and capital constitute hegemonic power through processes of fixing and enclosure of space, meaning and practice. In such operations, the strange and the vague are represented in a pejorative or marginalised manner, and become the target of order, control and rationalisation. Thus we see the possibilities in strangeness and vagueness, and the practices associated with them (such as wandering, rambling, borderless existence), as political activities that run counter to the hegemonic powers of modernity, opening up possibilities for other forms of space and practice. In the five substantive sections which follow, we will first examine the notion of vagueness and its relationship to spatial practices though its etymological origins. We will then examine the relationship between vagueness, representation and modern capitalism primarily though an examination of the work of Henri Lefebvre. The third section will consider vagueness and the practice of everyday life, seeing the vague as an inherently pragmatic understanding of the world with radical possibilities. We will then illustrate the concept of vague spaces through two examples: representations of the strange possibilities of terrain vague in urban photographic practice, and a discussion of Jewish ‘eruvim’ as a form of re-enchantment in contemporary urban space.

Keywords: Space, Enclosure, Vagueness, Terrain Vague, Photography, Eruv, Lefebvre, Eruvim.

This ipaper is an early draft of the above paper. Try to reference the above paper if possible, or better yet, buy the book! There are some great chapters in it.

Hebrew sources for Tetouan history

by Chahbar Abdelaziz

Arab Sibandis at Baroda and the British Policies towards them 1800-1803, published in Proceedings of Indian History Congress, New Delhi, 2008.

by Rashmi Batchu