The University of Virginia Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures Spring 2012 Volume 2, Issue 2 A Sermon in Stone .............................1 A Sermon in Stone Notes from the Chair: We Believe in the Enduring Power of Words ........................................3 Peacebuilding: A Life ........................4 One Journey: Through the Heart of Peacebuilding ....................................5 Women in the Media .........................6 Introducing Iranian Cinema .............8 Project Global Officer ........................8 A Unique Program at U.Va................9 New MESALC Courses 2012 ........... 10 Spring in Hindi-Urdu’s Garden ...... 11 New in the MESALC Library ........... 12 Photo Credit: James Bowen My Year Abroad ............................... 13 The next time you walk by the Jefferson statue in front of Critical Language Scholarships ....... 14 the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, look a little closer on the west side facing the chapel. Ponder why the sculptor, Moses Jefferson Trust Grant ...................... 14 Ezekiel, inscribed the names of God on a tablet: Jehovah, Brahma, Atma, Ra, Allah, Zeus. Calendar of Events .......................... 15 The answer is a “sermon in stone.” When the Jefferson sculpture by Moses Ezekiel was unveiled at Thank You, Jessica Strang .............. 16 U.Va. in June 1910, then President Edwin Alderman waxed eloquently of how “endless generations” of students would be Writing Beyond Lives: Reflections on inspired by this “sermon in stone.” In the “graven image” of a 33- the “Alternative Biographies” year-old Jefferson, reading from the text of his American Symposium ...................................... 17 Declaration of Independence, Alderman saw a “young man caught 2 | MESALC NEWSLETTER A SERMON IN STONE up in the heaven of a great idea; a “the one God.” Under the upon to fight the invading young man on fire with Religious Liberty inscription, he Northern Army in 1864 at revolutionary impulse…. holding placed Haymarket. Jefferson was up to the world… the most “the names of the deities of other wounded and later died in significant political document nations, to show that between Ezekiel’s arms – after Ezekiel ever written by man.” Liberty and Justice, and under our read to Jefferson the Gospel of Today, we hear echoes of government, they mean, and are John passage about the “mansion Jefferson’s hope for the “ball of all God—and have no other with many rooms.” liberty” to “roll around the world” meaning and have each an equal After the war, no less than in the unfolding struggles for right and the protection of our just Robert E. Lee encouraged Ezekiel freedom across the Middle East laws as Americans.” to devote his life to art, and he and North Africa. A sculpture on Religious earned fame as a sculptor based in Yet there are still deeper Freedom and Jefferson had Rome, Italy. Ezekiel’s portfolio “lessons in bronze” on the especially poignant meaning for includes famous busts of iconic sculpture. Jefferson is perched on Ezekiel, who was born in 1844 to figures -- Washington, Lee, top of a recreation of the Liberty a large Richmond family of Jackson, and Poe – and of course Bell. Around the bell are, in Sephardic Jews. Ezekiel was the Homer (on the U.Va. lawn) as Ezekiel’s words, “four female first Jew to enroll in the Virginia well as the “New South” figures, the winged spirits or genii Military Institute in the fall of monument at Arlington National that embody the great 1862. Cemetery. Jeffersonian ideas” – namely, Yet Ezekiel also repeatedly did Liberty, Equality, Justice and major works devoted to themes of Religious Freedom. faith, to Israel, and to religious Ezekiel dubbed the religious freedom. freedom figure “Vox Populi, Vox Tellingly, when Ezekiel first Dei” (the voice of the people is arrived in Rome in 1874, he was the voice of God), and she “holds required to live behind the walls jealously to her heart” a special of the Jewish Ghetto, the tablet. abominable “place of tears.” At the center of her tablet is Those walls were not torn down “Religious Freedom, 1786” – until 1888. which refers to the seminal As Rabbi David Philipson Virginia Statute on Religious reflected in an early tribute, Freedom. (Jefferson late in life “because Ezekiel was a Jew, deemed the statute one of his religious liberty appeared to him three greatest legacies, the other the greatest of all the two being the Declaration of achievements of the founders in Independence and the founding of Photo Courtesy of HMdb.org the front rank of whom Jefferson Photographer J. J. Prats the University of Virginia). stood.” Ezekiel further explains Incredibly, Ezekiel’s VMI As such, Ezekiel “loved to the tablet in a letter to his father: roommate was one Thomas G. portray this idea… in stone “on the left I have placed the Jefferson, grandson of a cousin to whenever the opportunity Aum of the Hindus,” and on the Thomas Jefferson. Both were offered.” right, in Hebrew, a reference to among the VMI cadets called WM. SCOTT HARROP 3 | MESALC NEWSLETTER NOTES FROM THE CHAIR We Believe in the Enduring Power of Words On the contrary, she engaged in contextualization, patience, and public service of the highest order. cross-cultural understanding. Leaving the opulent palace of her Tolerance, especially in the religious father—the grand vizier—she put sense, was a founding tenet of Mr. her life at risk to save the lives of Jefferson’s University as well as his other innocent citizens. She statue gracing the entrance to the volunteered to marry a spouse who Rotunda and the Statute on Religious was not only unruly and wicked, but Freedom, as revealed by the amazing also driven to abysmal reprisal. interfaith “sermon in stone” that This activist, the iconic Scott Harrop identifies and analyzes storyteller, Scheherazade, who in his article. should also be recognized as a The fact that our department master strategist and accomplished represents the languages and cultures negotiator, was wise enough to know of such a large and diverse part of Photo Courtesy of Dan Addison she could not solve the crisis at hand the world, with myriad long and rich by returning to the tactics that had histories of nations both at war and As history is being made in front created the crisis in the first place. at peace, makes it more important of our bedazzled eyes, as politicians Violence, she knew, is futile. It than ever to recognize, as Roy Hange in the region come and go, and as breeds more violence. puts it in his piece: “learning governments are voted into office For one thousand and one nights, together how to agree to disagree and chased out, we, in the under the looming threat of with an emerging sense of mutual department of Middle Eastern and decapitation, she lived with a serial respect.” South Asian Languages and Cultures killer, her husband King Shahriyar, Scheherazade certainly did not continue to believe in the impeccable in a claustrophobic space so that she agree with King Shahriyar’s brutal power of words. Even if at times, the could stop murder and mayhem. And tactics, nor could she justify his languages we teach and the poems, that she did, without shedding a drop profound and domineering distrust of songs, films, and novels we analyze of blood. She relied solely on the art women, but she understood that tell harrowing tales, even when they of storytelling. She trusted words, every political appeal must begin bleed with sorrow and grief, an and words, in turn, saved her and her with empathy, with the power of inspiring sense of courage and compatriots. carefully chosen words, and genuine resistance shines through them. They Several of the pieces in our third interest in listening to the words of are the luminous accounts of an newsletter confirm the validity and the other. audacious sense of survival. They long-term efficacy of Scheherazade’s Shoulder to shoulder with our are indeed declarations of victory, strategy. Through a combination of engaged students, we, too, in the promising better days and strategic narration, careful listening, department of Middle Eastern recognizing the regenerative power and open-minded tolerance of all Languages and Cultures, recognize of words. sides of the conflict, she established the elusive yet magical power of Take the inspiring legend of a peace under impossible language over violence, of words young woman who declined to be circumstances. over swords. And we continue to complicit in a ruler's vindictive fury Sue Williams tells the fascinating dream with our eyes wide open for a and murderous revenge. At a time of tale of how she and her husband better world and better days. national crisis, she did not remain made a career out of peacebuilding silent or uninvolved; nor did she across the world, from Uganda to look the other way or leave the FARZANEH MILANI Northern Ireland, through careful dictator to his antics. self-education, historical 4 | MESALC NEWSLETTER Peace building: A Life Our first explicitly war-oriented prisoners to understand how they assignment, for British and Irish saw the problem, and to help them Quakers, was characteristically assess the words and actions of vague: We hear there’s a war in people they refused to meet with Uganda. Why don’t you go and see directly. what you can do? Over time, one by one, they It was a great privilege to have began to be willing to meet those so much autonomy in analyzing, they didn’t yet trust, first in and then trying to help solve, the confidential meetings through us, many aspects that war presents as a and later in direct negotiations. problem. Important work was done by We worked with local people, many people at many levels, with learning how they understood and the eventual result that change did experienced the war, supporting happen.1 their efforts, and finding niches In the end, we lived there 20 where we could perhaps do years, in later years working more something they could not.