CFP: "Counterpoints: Edward Said’s Legacy," University of Ottawa and Carleton University, October 31-November 2, 2008.

This bilingual English/French colloquium celebrates the works of one of the world’s most compelling intellectuals, the Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said (November 1st 1935- September 23rd 2003), author of Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and Out of Place among other famous books. The colloquium revolves around the theme of 'Counterpoint,' extensively used by Said as the interplay of diverse ideas and various 'discrepant' cultural experiences. As Said writes in Culture and Imperialism: "As we look back at the cultural archive, we begin to reread it not univocally but contrapuntally, with a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts.” Following Said’s legacy this colloquium envisions a polyphonic, interdisciplinary engagement from fields as broad as comparative literature, sociology, anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, Diaspora studies, musicology, and political science with a special focus on Middle Eastern politics. The organizers seek papers/ panel proposals drawing from or expanding on the following themes: • Colonialism and Imperialism: a Middle Eastern Context • Transnationalism and Reflections on Exile • Overlapping Territories and Imaginative Geographies • Language, History and the Production of Knowledge • The Arab World: States, Territories and Refugees. • Gender, Class and Orientalism • Criticism and French Philosophy • Otherness in the Arts • Representations of the Secular • Power, Politics and Truth Please send a 200 word abstract of paper/panel proposals to counterpoints.conference@gmail.com; deadline for paper/panel submission: July 15th, 2008. For more information please contact: may.telmissany@uottawa.ca or nahla_abdo@carleton.ca. See the CFP online here: http://www.carleton.ca/socanth/documents/CallforPapersSaid08_000.pdf.