Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis University of Amsterdam

Bushuis, KloveniersburgwalASCA 48, room F101C, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands, [email protected],

Nieuwsbrief 192 September 2016

Dissertation Defence: Matthé Scholten ...... 1 DISSERTATION DEFENCE: JOS VAN HELVOORT Dissertation Defence: Jos van Helvoort ...... 1 Assessment of information literacy skills in higher ASCA Biennale Seminar: Cinema Olanda - Projecting education. Supervisors: Frank Huysmans, Saskia Brand- The Netherlands ...... 1 Gruwel and Ellen Sjoer. 15 September, 14:00 hrs. Philosophy and Public Affairs colloquium ...... 3 Agnietenkapel. The construct 'information literacy' refers to the skills ASCA Trans-Asia cultural studies reading group ..... 4 to solve information problems by the use of Self-Optimization: A Duty to Oneself? ...... 4 information from the internet or a more or less digital Getting Past Schmitt? Political Realism and the library. Those skills are regarded as an essential Autonomy of Politics ...... 4 competence for students in higher education. But how ASCA Skills Seminar: Conferences, Publishing, Job can you measure students' information literacy skills? Market ...... 5 And which assessment instrument is also suitable for ASCA Cities Seminar: Urban World-Making ...... 5 the stimulation of those skills? Reasoning through Art...... 5 In his PhD thesis Jos van Helvoort reports research The Occupation of the Senses ...... 6 that makes it plausible that a scoring rubric is preferred if one looks for an instrument that can Palestinorama! ...... 6 evaluate as well as stimulate students' information Sexing the City ...... 8 literacy skills. Based on literature research, Farewell to the Beautiful Soul ...... 8 conversations with colleague teachers and Dramaturgies of Cultural Translation ...... 9 observations of student behaviour, was developed a Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler ...... 9 scoring rubric for performance assessment of ACLA 2017 - Utrecht University ...... 10 information literacy. This assessment instrument was VENI support track ...... 10 subsequently tested and evaluated in various

empirical studies.

DISSERTATION DEFENCE: MATTHÉ SCHOLTEN Reminders of Duty: A Kantian Theory of Blame. ASCA BIENNALE SEMINAR: CINEMA OLANDA - Supervisors: Josef Früchtl and Marcus Willaschek. 9 PROJECTING THE NETHERLANDS September, 12:00 hrs. Agnietenkapel. Hosted by Esther Peeren and Patricia Pisters, in close This dissertation develops a Kantian quality of will collaboration with Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Lucy account of moral blameworthiness. Part I reconstructs Cotter. the so-called Reinhold/Sidgwick Objection. According • 15 September 2016: 10.00 - 13.00 to this objection, anyone who accepts the Kantian • 15 November 2016: 14.00 - 17.00 conception of autonomy is forced to draw the absurd • 13 December 2016: 16.00 - 19.00 conclusion that no one is ever morally blameworthy • 7 February 2017: 14.00 - 17.00 for anything. Part II focuses on the problem of free • 11 April 2017: 14.00 - 17.00 will. Here I argue that the standard Kantian attempts The ASCA seminar will take a series of films by Dutch to reconcile this sort of freedom with determinism rely contemporary artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh (1962) on implausible and ad hoc metaphysical assumptions as its departure point. Van Oldenborgh’s work is and should therefore be rejected. This rejection is acclaimed for its use of the cinematic format as a supported by a critical reflection on the Principle of methodology for production, with live (public) film Alternate Possibilities and the principle Ought Implies shoots generating the collective co-production of Can. Part III develops a Kantian quality of will account scripts. Known for ground-breaking works set in of excuses and exemptions. This account explains why colonial architecture and engaging with its attendant physical constraint, unintentional bodily movement, discourses, such as Maurits Script (2006), her recent ignorance and coercion often provide an excuse and work engages with Modernist architecture that paved why patients suffering from psychosis are often the way for the social, economic and political realities exempted from moral responsibility. If the proposed of globalism. In her latest film, From Left to Night (2015) account is correct, the Reinhold/Sidgwick Objection three sites embodying1960s idealist architecture in does not take hold. London form points of intersection of events, subjects

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and recent histories related to the London riots, music Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of and feminism. Oriental Studies at Oxford University. The ‘Cinema Olanda’ is the title of the project by collaboration resulted in a script that exposes the Wendelien van Oldenborgh and curator Lucy Cotter mechanisms used to silence certain voices in current (Ireland, 1973) that will form the Dutch entry for the society. The students act as a chorus in a playful 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, taking place in interchange with Ramadan's ideas and thoughts, 2017. Taking the Dutch national pavilion, designed by which explore issues such as diversity, fear, conflict, Gerrit Rietveld in 1953, as a Modernist projection of and his own interrupted engagements in the city of the Netherlands, their exhibition will make space for Rotterdam. The script was formed ad hoc, during the lesser-known episodes in Dutch postcolonial history shoot, and was guided by the cast's own real-life and explore how they resonate with current transitions experiences and forms of expression. in the Netherlands’ cultural and political landscape. NB. Lucy Cotter will be present during this session The exhibition and live events in Venice will be Texts: accompanied by a multidisciplinary symposium • Eric C.H. Bruyn, “A Mini-Tragedy: Supposing I love entitled Cinema Olanda: Projecting the Netherlands, you. And you also love me, 2011”, Amateur, Berlin: which will take place at various locations in the Sternberg Press, 2016, 233-244. Netherlands in October 2017 in partnership with • Rosalind Krauss, “…And Then Turn Away” (1997), Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). This repub. James Coleman, ed. George Baker, October seminar series is the first manifestation of this Files 5, MIT Press, 2003, 157-185. collaboration. • “The Third Meaning: Research Notes on Some Programme: Eisenstein Stills” by Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Seminar 1: 15 Sept. 10.00–13.00 hrs, OMHP A 2.01 Text, London: Fontana Press, 1977, 52-68. FILM: Wendelien van Oldenborgh - Maurits Script Seminar 3: 13 Dec. 16.00 – 19.00 hrs., BG2 room 0.08 2006. Duration: 67 minutes FILM: Wendelien van Oldenborgh, La Javanaise, 2012, Film based on a script compiled of excerpts from documentation version, duration: 25 minutes different sources relating to Johan Maurits van La Javanaise centres on the circularity of relations Nassaus period as governor of the North East of Brazil between a Dutch textile company, former colonies in (1637 – 1644), for which he has often been credited as the East Indies, the display of colonial history, and being an early modernist ruler. Maurits Script focuses current African markets within a contemporary, on the paradoxes and inner conflicts produced within globalized world. It uses the example of the textile firm the art of governing, the institutions of the period, and Vlisco, which developed a particular fabric known as personal relations at a moment when many different Dutch Wax or Wax Hollandaise based on the groups found themselves living together with clashing traditional Javanese resist-dye method batik. Under interests. It was staged and filmed as a live event in the recent pressure of imitation from Chinese producers, Golden Room of the Mauritshuis, The Hague (built by Vlisco now brands itself as the ‘True Original’ Dutch Maurits during his period of government in Brazil), Wax and has relaunched as a fashion label creating where a group of participants, each of whom have images in the Netherlands, with international African differing relations to the contents of the script, will top models presenting the products to an African perform it and discuss its contents in relation to the clientele. La Javanaise features fashion model Sonja present day. Wanda, artist, writer, and former model Charl NB. Wendelien van Oldenborgh will be present during Landvreugd, and the writer and theorist David this session. Dibosa. Through unrehearsed dialogue and Texts: performance staged in the setting of the former • Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Film Script, Maurits Colonial Institute in Amsterdam, the work addresses Script (2006) the inextricable link between imagination and • Avery F. Gordon, “Hawthorn Archive: Subjugated authenticity and between colonialism and Knowledge/Brazil/Morronage/MAURITS SCRIPT globalization. (2006)”, Amateur, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016, 131- In this session also references to the film by Daniele 159. Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, Class Relations • Suely Rolnik, “Anthropofagic Subjectivity”, Arte [Klassenverhaeltenis] (1984). Contemporânea Brasileira: Um e/entre Outro/s, São Texts: Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1998. • Wendelien van Oldenborgh, La Javanaise, Seminar 2: 15 Nov. 14.00–17.00 hrs, Belle van Zuylen (UB) Hollandaise ex. cat., Amsterdam: SMBA, 2013. FILM: Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Supposing I love • Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a you. And you also love me, 2011, Duration: 13 minutes Minor Literature, Trans. Dana Polan, London and A film developed in collaboration with a group of Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. young Belgian and Dutch students from different • Giorgio Agamben, “What Is the Contemporary?”, backgrounds and Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-Egyptian What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, trans. David philosopher, theologian and professor of

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Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, Stanford University whom and how they have to be dealt with in a liberal Press, 2009). democracy. This is particularly pressing in questions • David Dibosa, “Fugitive Direction: Reflections in the about religious diversity and fundamentalism, Tropenmuseum”, Amateur, Berlin: Sternberg Press, biotechnology and modern medicine, to name but a 2016, 161-184. few examples. In spite of their obvious differences in Seminar 4: 7 Feb. 14.00–17.00 hrs., Belle van Zuylen content, problems in areas such as these jointly call for FILM 4: Wendelien van Oldenborgh, From Left to serious reconsideration of political, moral and ethical Night, 2015. Duration: 32 minutes concepts. The principles of liberalism and democracy, From Left to Night explores the collision of a number of distinctions like the ones between the private and the seemingly unconnected players, places, events, and public, fact and value, science and politics, and histories—all drawn from a complex London between individual morality and the normative neighbourhood, an area of deprivation bordered by neutrality of liberal democracies have to be interpreted the wealthiest sites of the city. The film revolves against the background of the new societal problems. around six people, three locations, and the different Established institutions and practices to deal with subjects and forms of knowledge they bring with public concerns need to be re-evaluated. These include them. These range from urban tensions, such as the sovereignty of the national state, the autonomous unresolved histories of the 2011 London riots, to new individual as the basic unit in normative theory, the feminist and racial theories, music videos, 1960s view that democratic politics is the execution of idealist architecture, and the personal ways in which aggregated individual preferences, and the role of each of the protagonists relates to these things. The expertise in democracy. filming location moves between the outside of With this series of lectures by prominent political and Paddington Green Police Station, where UK terror moral philosophers both from inside and outside the suspects are detained and questioned, to the Joe Netherlands, we want to shed light on different Strummer Subway beneath it (named after the lead aspects of the broad problematic, from both more singer of the punk band the Clash, which allegedly theoretically oriented as well as more concretely social formed locally), and a recording studio whose fame and political perspectives. dates back to the early 1980s when Duran Duran 14 September (first session): Katharina Bauer recorded the hit song Girls on Film there. Through (Bochum/Groningen): Self-Optimization: A Duty to carefully orchestrated scenarios, van Oldenborgh Oneself?(see below) creates situations where the meeting of these elements 28 September: William Scheuerman (Bloomington): triggers new articulations and sparks of logic. The Getting Past Schmitt? Political Realism and the Autonomy ‘script’ was generated with the full involvement of the of Politics (see below) players, during the process of filming. 14 October (FRI)10-12am: Catriona Mackenzie Text: (Macquarie): Moral Responsibility and the Social • Denise Ferreira da Silva*, To Be Announced: Radical Dynamics of Power and Oppression Praxis or Knowing (at) the Limits of Justice, Social 1-3pm: John Christman (Penn State): Positive Freedom in Text 114, Spring 2013, 43-62. the Non-Ideal World • Denise Ferreira da Silva, “Reflecting on 3-5pm: Joel Anderson (Utrecht): Social Affordances of Representation”, Amateur, Berlin: Sternberg Press, Individual Self-Determination: What Autonomy Gaps 2016, 81-84. [A reflection on her role in the film]. Reveal about Our Agentic Vulnerabilities • Fred Moten, Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism 3 November (THU): Stuart White (Oxford): What is the in the Flesh), The South Atlantic Quarterly 112: 4, Place of Citizens’ Assemblies in a Democracy? 2013, 738-780. 21 November: Nancy Fraser (The New School): tbd (in • Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Random House, 1952. 3.01 Universiteitstheater) Seminar 5: 11 April 14.00–17.00 hrs., Belle van Zuylen 23 November: Hanne de Jaegher (University of the The content of this seminar will be determined and Basque Country, San Sebastián/UvA): Love and announced later. Enaction: A Proposal You can register by sending an email to asca- 7 December: Carlos Becker (Frankfurt/M.): The Right to [email protected]. Participation is limited and ASCA PhD Resist in Democratic Theory candidates are given priority. 14 December: Amy Allen (Penn State): Recognizing Ambivalence: Honneth, Butler, and Philosophical PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS COLLOQUIUM Anthropology (in Doelenzaal UB) If not noted otherwise: Wednesdays, 16:00-18 hrs., Note: Some papers will be distributed in advance, so Faculteitskamer, Oude Turfmarkt 147,entrance at 141, please register! For registration and any inquiries, Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam email: [email protected] or [email protected] Everyone is welcome! A common characteristic of many contemporary social problems is the uncertainty about the extent in which these problems are public affairs, and thus where, by

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ASCA TRANS-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES READING Feodor-Lynen research fellow at the Rijksuniversiteit GROUP Groningen where she is working on a project with the Organized by Jeroen de Kloet ([email protected]) title ‘Perfecting Oneself and Forming One’s Character: Location: Turfdraagsterpad 9 A Duty to Oneself and/or Responsibility towards Time: Thursday afternoons, 15.30 - 17.00 on September 29, Others?’. Her PhD thesis appeared in 2012 under the October 27, December 1, January 26, February 23, tba. title ‘Einander zu erkennen geben. Das Selbst zwischen The ASCA Trans-Asia cultural studies reading group Erkenntnis und Gabe’. For the full program see the aims to bring scholars in The Netherlands together ASCA website, www.asca.uva.nl who are working on issues related to "Asia," to read and discuss key texts as well as each other’s work. The GETTING PAST SCHMITT? POLITICAL REALISM hitherto absence of such a reading group is AND THE AUTONOMY OF POLITICS particularly remarkable when many of us who study Philosophy and Public Affairs with William Asia have been drawing on work from cultural studies Scheuerman 28 September, 4-6 pm, OTM 147, asca.uva.nl scholars. The research interest of this reading group is One of the main aims of the new realism in political broad: not only work that focuses on cultural practices philosophy is to give greater autonomy to politics. in Asia, but also related studies on the presence of Asia Political realists worry about the alleged reduction of in Europe or elsewhere is included. This reading group politics to a subdivision of ethics or morality. At the operates deliberately on the interstices of humanities same time, they claim that the unpleasant specter of and social sciences, and aims at an inclusive and 'might makes right' and its nasty cousin Realpolitik critical approach that refuses to privilege any can both be dodged. How? particular academic paradigm. It aspires to bring Normative standards internal to politics can be together students from research masters, PhD identified allowing us to delineate legitimate politics candidates as well as faculty members from different from illegitimate domination or violence. Recourse to departments at different universities. moral standards prior or external to politics, along the We prefer to discuss work in progress, either one or lines endorsed by political moralists, is both two papers per session of 1.5 hours, but alternative unnecessary and counterproductive. Prominent proposals (screenings, walks, exhibitions) are always classical realists such as Hans J. Morgenthau welcome. anticipated key features of the new political realism. However, there are some subtle but significant SELF-OPTIMIZATION: A DUTY TO ONESELF? differences between Morgenthau’s views about the First session Philosophy and Public Affairs with autonomy of politics and those now found among Katharina Bauer. 14 September 4-6 pm. OTM 147, contemporary realists. The paper focuses on these Faculty room differences not for antiquarian reasons but because Most people try to improve themselves in one way or they are crucial for identifying the new realism’s another – they want to be more intelligent, more theoretical frailties. To see why this is so we must successful, more beautiful. And (hopefully) they also briefly return to Weimar Germany, and to strive to become better friends, parents, citizens, and Morgenthau’s struggle to differentiate his ideas about moral agents. the political from Carl Schmitt’s, whose own views, Modern techniques of human enhancement create new Morgenthau presciently grasped as a young jurist, opportunities of self-optimization. In spite of on-going were conceptually flawed as well as politically debates about the risks and moral concerns that are irresponsible. Though it is unclear whether related to such techniques, some bioethicists and Morgenthau ever succeeded in offering a fully neuroscientists argue that enhancements are not only satisfactory rejoinder to Schmitt, his efforts to do so permissible, but they should be regarded as a moral offer useful lessons for contemporary realism. Present- obligation. Is there an imperative or even a duty to day realists need to distinguish their efforts from optimize oneself in order to contribute more efficiently Schmitt’s legacy more effectively than they so far have to the goods and goals of a group, of society or of achieved. As they struggle to do so, they can learn mankind as such? Do others have a corresponding from Morgenthau’s example. right to necessitate a person to enhance her physical William E. Scheuerman is Professor of Political Science and mental capacities? and International Studies at Indiana University I will discuss the example of the use of smart drugs in (Bloomington). He has published extensively on academia to hint at problematic aspects of imperatives Frankfurt School critical theory and the law as well as of self-optimization. Still, I will finally argue with Kant on civil disobedience. His books include The Realist that there may be good reasons to regard it as an Case for Global Reform (Polity Press, 2011), High- imperfect duty to oneself – and not towards others – to Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power and advance one’s own nature, personality, and moral Modernity (Penn State Press, 2009), and Frankfurt perfection on the basis of critical self-reflection. School Perspectives on Globalization, Democracy and Katharina Bauer is a post-Doc in the Philosophy the Law (Routledge, 2008). Department at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and currently

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ASCA SKILLS SEMINAR: CONFERENCES, indelibly intertwined with power relations and PUBLISHING, JOB MARKET spatiotemporal processes. Organizers: Patricia Pisters & Esther Peeren The seminar seeks to analyse urban world-making by Dates: Seminar I: Conferences, Tuesday 18 October 2016, exploring a diverse set of case studies. From 15:00-17:00, Seminar II: Publishing, Friday 25 November participatory art projects in Brazilian favelas and 2016, 15:00-17:00, Seminar III: Job Market, Thursday 16 creative “re-making” in crisis and permanent austerity, March 2017, 15:00-17:00 to social networks, planetary scale computing and What should (and shouldn’t) I do at academic visions of urban migration, the seminar aims to bring conferences? How do I go about organizing a concrete urban case studies into dialogue with conference, seminar or masterclass? Where should cultural-theoretical work on worlding and world- (and shouldn’t) I publish my research? How long does making. In doing so, it will also consider the current it take for a publication to come out? How do I write a interest in designing cities for a post-capitalist future, book proposal? How do I get an academic job or as addressed from vantages ranging from a “politics of postdoc position in the Netherlands or abroad? What hope” (Appadurai 2013, Srnicek and Williams 2015) to other careers are open to me with a PhD? The ASCA participatory design (Mitrasinovic 2015) and equitable skills seminar provides answers to these questions and infrastructures (Bratton 2016). more tailored to ASCA PhD candidates and other The seminar is open to all ASCA/NICA members and interested ASCA members. Three sessions have been registered participants, including PhD and Research planned, but more can be added upon request from MA students from all Dutch universities. Selected the participants. You can register for individual Research MA students may participate in the seminar seminars or for the whole series. To register, send an for university credit and have it count as a tutorial for email to [email protected]. their studies. Please contact the organisers for further details: Carolyn Birdsall ([email protected]) and Niall ASCA CITIES SEMINAR: URBAN WORLD-MAKING Martin ([email protected]). First session on 30 September 2016: Focused reading group on concepts of “worldmaking” and “worlding” (led by REASONING THROUGH ART. Carolyn Birdsall and Niall Martin). 28 October 2016, 18 The Articulation of Embodied Knowledge. November 2016, 16 December 2016, 17 February 2017, 17 A lecture by Henk Borgdorff in the Colloquium March 2017, 21 April 2017, 19 May 2017. Keywords: Musicologicum, 22 September 3:50-5 pm, University worldmaking, worlding, global imaginations, temporalities, Theatre room 301 art, media, infrastructures My contribution will start with asking whether The theme of the 2016-2017 ASCA Cities Seminar is research by artists, so-called artistic research, is “Urban World-Making.” We are interested in equivalent to academic research. Artists in their examining how processes of world-making feature in research often make use of insights, methods and the production of urban environments and across techniques, which stem from social science, humanities creative, cultural and political practices under or technological research, but it is not clear what conditions of globalization. artistic research itself has to offer to academia. In my Taking the philosophical concept of worldmaking talk I will develop a positive understanding of (Goodman 1992) as its departure point, the seminar research in and through the arts, touching upon its will ask how it might be expanded beyond the role of epistemology and methodology, and addressing the language and symbolic forms in co-creating worlds. form and relevance of its outcomes. I will point to four We will critically evaluate this concept in light of the related issues that are pertinent to research in and challenges to notions of a unified world (and through art: an advanced understanding of worldview) posed by decolonial and intersectional discursivity, of reasoning; the methodological theories, and explore its relation to ideas of worlding relevance of material practices and things; innovative elaborated by Gayatri Spivak and others. Our ways of publishing art in academia; and advanced discussions will acknowledge the modes and forms of peer review. This will be illustrated by the expressions by which urban worlds are imagined, workings of the Journal for Artistic Research and its experienced, aestheticized and organised. In what associated Research Catalogue. Besides, it is key to the ways are global processes bound up with lived advancement of the artistic research field that we not experience and affective geographies? How is the only advertise and export our epistemological and imagination of world systems or global connectivity methodological distinctiveness, but that we also join articulated in creative praxis? And which methods – forces with others in our attempt to re-think academia. including and extending beyond visualisation – can be Henk Borgdorff is philosopher and music theorist. He used to track urban processes, relations or temporal studied music theory in The Hague and philosophy flows? Engaging with and expanding on these and sociology in Leiden. Borgdorff is full professor of questions, the seminar will explore how contemporary Research in the Arts at the Academy of Creative and forms of world-making are constituted, and are Performing Art, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University and professor (‘lector’) at the Royal

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Conservatoire / University of the Arts, The Hague (The The lecture is part of the Symposium “Securitizing Netherlands). He was ’lector' in Art Theory and Worlds: A Critical Look at Israel Global Security Research at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (until Industry” organized by gate48. 2010), visiting professor in Aesthetics at the Faculty of 2) Masterclass: Israel, Palestine and the Occupation of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of the Senses Gothenburg (until 2013), and editor of the Journal for Time: Tuesday, 13 September Artistic Research (until 2015). His has published Credits: 1 EC widely on the theoretical and political rationale of Registration: send an email to Noa Roei research in the arts. A selection is published in May ([email protected]) before September 8 2016. 2012 as The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on In the Masterclass, participants will have the Artistic Research and Academia (Leiden University opportunity to discuss the aesthetic of violence in Press). Borgdorff is president of the Society for Artistic occupied East Jerusalem. Colonial and settler colonial Research. dispossession is performed through various forms of violence, justified by cultural, historical, religious and THE OCCUPATION OF THE SENSES national imperatives. In this paper, I define one of Public talk and master Class with Nadera Shalhoub- these forms of violence as the occupation of the senses, Kevorkian. CREA Amsterdam, 13-14 September referring to the sensory technologies that manage Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a long-time anti- bodies, language, sight, time and space in the colony. violence, native Palestinian feminist activist and This paper analyses the parades, marches and festivals scholar. She is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at performed in the Palestinian city space of occupied the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the East Jerusalem; shares the slogans, chants and graffiti School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the used by Israeli civil, religious and nationalist entities; Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shalhoub-Kevorkian and explores what is lived, seen, heard, felt and is also the director of the Gender Studies Program at smelled by the colonized to uncover the political Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social violence implicated in the occupation of the senses. Research in Haifa. Her research focuses on femicide, NICA-affiliated rMA Students who attend both public state crime, child abuse, and other forms of gendered lecture and Masterclass and submit a 1000-word violence, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial written response engaging with materials presented contexts, surveillance, securitization, and trauma in there are eligible for 1 EC. To register send an email to: militarized and colonized zones. [email protected] before September 8 2018. With the financial support of NICA and SECURCIT (ERC) PALESTINORAMA! 1) Public talk: Security Theology, Surveillance and the A Palestinian film and culture Festival / Theatre De Nieuwe Politics of Fear Regentes (Weimaarstraat 63, The Hague), Co-organized by Time: Wednesday, 14 September, 20:00 hrs. Amir Vudka. Location: CREA (Nieuwe Achtergracht 170) Palestinorama! is a festival dedicated to Palestinian In her lecture Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian will speak culture. The festival revolves around Palestinian about her latest book. In it she examines Palestinian cinema, and includes live music, art, poetry, food and experiences of life and death within the context of more. The festival’s goal is to expose audiences to a Israeli settler colonialism and broadens the analytical broad panoramic view of the richness, beauty and horizon to include those who keep existing. She complexity of the Palestinian cultural life. explores how Israeli theologies and ideologies of The festival is a collaboration of theatre De Nieuwe security, surveillance and fear can obscure violence Regentes, DNR Filmclub, Pardes Producties and and power dynamics while perpetuating existing Muawiya Shehadeh. Sponsored by Fonds 1818 and power structures. Drawing from everyday aspects of Stichting Haëlla. Palestinian victimization, survival, life and death, and Program: moving between the local and the global, Nadera * Opening Night * Tuesday 6/9/2016 * Shalhoub-Kevorkian introduces and defines her notion 19:15 | Tearoom | Reception with Palestinian live music of “Israeli security theology”; and the politics of fear and finger-food (by restaurant Love&Peas) within Palestine/Israel. She relies on a feminist 20:15 | Grote Zaal | Film: Wedding in Galilee (Michel analysis, invoking the intimate politics of the everyday Khleifi, 1987) / 114 min and centring the Palestinian body, family life, memory The screening will be held in the presence of the film’s and memorialization, birth and death as critical sites director and Palestinian film scholar, . from which to examine the settler colonial states After the screening he will discuss his work and machineries of surveillance which produce and Palestinian cinema in general. maintain a political economy of fear that justifies The elder of a Palestinian village under Israeli military colonial violence. rule needs permission to hold a traditional wedding for his son that will go past the imposed night curfew. The Army commander agrees, on the condition that he

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and his officers will be invited as guests of honour at Suleiman makes his point that the disappearance he's the ceremony. chronicling is that of the identity of his people. One of the first Palestinian film productions, Wedding The film was shown at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, in Galilee is a richly-detailed allegory of marriage, where it won the award for Best First Film Prize. tradition and national identity. In his first full feature * 3rd Evening * Saturday 24/9/2016 * film Michel Khleifi displayed the narrative- 19:15 | Ketelhuis | 5 poems by Mahmoud Darwish documentary style – blending realism, fiction, myth, Five short films depicting poems by Mahmoud and ritual – that he went on to develop with such great Darwish, the Palestinian national poet. The effect. It also announced some of the major themes that films/poems chronicle his journey from a strictly permeate his later work: the centrality of the land to Palestinian point of view which describes the anguish Palestinian identity; the preservation of collective of dispossession and exile, to his later, more universal memory and culture; the difficulty of telling the standpoint. history of the nation; the trauma of defeat, - Before the screening Mr. Muawiya Shehadeh will displacement and exile; and his critique of the give an introduction to Mahmoud Darwish’s life and weakness and paralysis of what he considers to be an work. archaic Arab society. Darwish was the recipient of many international 22:30 | Grote Zaal | Talk with Michel Khleifi literary awards including the Lotus prize in 1969, the Michel Khleifi (born in 1950 in Nazareth) is a Lenin prize in 1983, France’s highest medal as Knight Palestinian film writer, director, producer, and film of Arts and Belles Lettres in 1997, and the Moroccan scholar presently based in Belgium. Khleifi emigrated Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King to Belgium in 1970, where he studied television and Mohammad VI of Morocco. In 2001, he won the theatre directing at the Institut National Supérieur des Lannan prize for cultural freedom. This prize Arts du Spectacle (INSAS). After graduating from recognizes people whose extraordinary and INSAS, he worked in Belgium television before courageous work celebrates the human right to turning to making his own films. He has directed and freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression. produced several documentary and feature films. He 20:15 | Grote Zaal | Film: 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat has received several awards, including the and Guy Davidi, 2011) / 94 min International Critics’ Prize at the , 5 Broken Cameras is an extraordinary work of cinematic the at San Sebastián International Film and political activism, and a deeply personal, first- Festival and the André Cavens Award in 1987 for his hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West film Wedding in Galilee. Khleifi currently teaches at Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli INSAS. settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer * 2nd Evening * Tuesday 20/9/2016 * Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to 20:15 | Grote Zaal | Concert: Palestinian Oud music by record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was Nizar Rohana later turned into a galvanizing cinematic experience Nizar Rohana is a Palestinian Oud player which revolves around Burnat’s broken cameras and distinguished for combining virtuosity within fresh the powerful stories they tell. The film won a 2012 contemporary compositions, while maintaining the Sundance Film Festival award, the Golden Apricot at Oud’s idiomatic language. the 2012 Yerevan International Film Festival, Armenia, Since September 2013, he has been based in the for Best Documentary Film, the 2013 International Netherlands pursuing his PhD in improvisation and Emmy Award, and was nominated for a 2013 composition in solo Oud performance at Leiden Academy Award. University Academy for Creative and Performing Arts. - With an introduction by Dr. Amir Vudka More info here: http://www.nizarrohana.com/ (Amsterdam University) on non-violent resistance and 21: 00 | Grote Zaal | Film: Chronicle of a Disappearance the conflict in Bil'in. (Elia Suleiman, 1996) / 88 min * Closing Evening * Tuesday 27/9/2016 * Deceptively simple and executed with a documentary 19:15 | Tearoom | Reception with Palestinian street art: feel, this drama represents a highly personal journey Palestinian hip hop music and a presentation of Palestinian home of ex-patriot Palestinian filmmaker Elia wall graffiti. Suleiman. The film is divided into two sections. The 20:15 | Grote Zaal | Film: Paradise Now (Hany Abu- first documents the paradoxical but sleepy existence in Assad, 2005) / 90 min the Arab part of Nazareth. The second part takes a The screening will be held in the presence of actor Kais more political view of the city and in it, Suleiman takes Nashif, with Q&A after the screening a more active role. Said and Khaled are two young friends who work as The film garnered worldwide critical acclaim for its car mechanics. When the two are approached to carry seemingly uneventful, but covertly subversive out a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, they readily agree. depiction of Palestinian life in Israel. In his Said only begins to have misgivings when he takes his fragmented, personal, self-critical, and low-key way, leave of Suha, the daughter of a fallen Palestinian

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resistance fighter who believes only in peaceful heterosexual marriage, while the GLTBQ community protest, not in explosives. in Delhi is facing legal measures against same sex Director Abu-Assad’s third feature film is a realistic, practices. Sexing the City aims to unravel this humane portrait of the individuals behind suicide proliferation of new gendered and sexed dynamics attacks, whose personal motives generally remain and subjectivities within recurring and persistent unknown. "The film is an artistic point of view of that heteronormative discourses. It also brings a gendered political issue," the director said. "The politicians want focus to key debates in urban studies such as urban to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art comparativism. wants to see it as a human thing." We use the transitive form “Sexing” to underline the The film won a Golden Globe for best foreign language continuity of this process, while highlighting its film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the instability. We address questions such as: How to live, same category. love and make love in times of precarity? How to feel 22:15 | Grote Zaal |Q&A with Kais Nashif safe while navigating the city autonomously? How to ** All Welcome ** remain ‘respectable,’ and according to whose criteria? How to resist heteronormative and patriarchal forces SEXING THE CITY that continue to haunt the cityscape? How and when Workshop organized by Penn Ip, 15-17 September 2016, and who can claim the right to the city? What impact Museum Volkenkunde / Research Center for Material creative forms of protest can have? And is it possible Culture. Exhibition Dates: September 15-October 16, 2016 to compare cities through a gendered lens? Indeed, Exhibition Venue: Museum, Steenstraat 1, Leiden though our focus is on Asia, these are questions that In 2015, five feminists were detained in China for more are as relevant for Europe today. than a month; their public activism for more female Sexing the City comprises discussion and debate toilets, against domestic violence and for safer including keynote presentations from prof. Raminder subways, appeared to challenge the authorities too Kaur (University of Sussex, UK) and prof. Jennifer much. Meanwhile, in India, calls for a safe city for Robinson (University College London, UK), film women continue to dominate public debate. Asian screenings of “Women” by Walker Lee (Shanghai), cities are changing at an unprecedented speed, along depicting the lives and loves of young urbanites in with their gendered social fabrics. Simultaneously, China and an art exhibition featuring the artists Li forces against changing gender roles also multiply, Xiaofei (Shanghai), Guo Qingling (Shanghai), and summoning a return to traditional (often regarded as Sheba Chhachhi (Delhi). ‘Asian’) values that invokes banishing women back to This workshop is the closing event of SINGLE the private sphere. (www.hera-single.de), a three-year research project Such dynamics can be seen in the rapidly transforming funded by Humanities in the European Research Area cities of Delhi and Shanghai that have become a site for (HERA). Project partners are Heidelberg University, changing family patterns and the undoing of the University of Amsterdam, and Birkbeck College ‘traditional’ social contracts as a result of migration, (University of London), as well as Fei Contemporary new work opportunities, delayed marriage, divorce, Art Foundation (Shanghai), Goethe Institute (New open homosexuality, and a growing leisure and Delhi) and The National Museum of World Cultures / consumer society. Reflecting moral panics centred on The Research Center for Material Culture (Amsterdam discourses of ‘westernisation’ and alleged disruption and Leiden). More information: acgs.uva.nl of public spaces, the resulting subjectivities are precarious, marked by asymmetrical power relations. FAREWELL TO THE BEAUTIFUL SOUL Gendered imaginaries of emancipation are therefore A Poetics for the Anthropocene contested in the light of a variety of cultural practices 23 September, 13:00-14:00 hrs. Location: VOC zaal, that impact women’s multiple life-worlds. University of Amsterdam In Sexing the City we wish to unpack the gendered We would like to cordially invite you to prof. dr. dimensions of rapid urban changes taking place today Marlene van Niekerk’s lecture which will be held as through the themes of autonomy, respectability and part of the symposium Human Nature? Memory, precarity. With our focus on Delhi and Shanghai we Ecology and Aesthetics at the University of Amsterdam. seek to examine how different groups face different Of course, you are also welcome to the attend the full and/or similar struggles. For example, in Delhi a symposium, which will be held in Afrikaans and female motor bike club explores new and shared forms Dutch mostly. of navigating urban space; in Shanghai, creative female The question here is whether and how certain forms of workers jump from job to job braving stigmatization augmented, patterned and foregrounded language by the outside world as overtly ambitious and ‘left- known as “poetry” matter in times of extreme crisis. over’ women (shengnü); in both Shanghai and Delhi, The crisis of the Anthropocene involves a paradigm migrant women face precarity in terms of labour and shift of the notion of the “human” itself and also the in terms of romance. Moreover, queer women date gay relationship of the “human” to “Nature”. Since 1950 men in China to pacify their parents’ wish for a humans have become a marked geophysical force that

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has changed earth systems to such a degree that theatre and performance. What is dramaturgy’s role in several planetary boundaries are already seriously the poetic labour of translation in diverse cultural violated. In her response (climate warming, contexts? At a second, broader level, the symposium biodiversity loss, acidification of the seas, the seeks to discuss how theatre and performance disturbance of the nitrogen/phosphate cycles), the dramaturgy might contribute to a critical theorization earth, now understood as a secular Gaia, has revealed of cultural translation. How might conceptions of herself as a finely tuned reactive entity –not only cultural translation re-introduce a critique of (neo)- wholly materially transcendent but also utterly colonialism into the discourses of globalization? How indifferent to us. We now relate to her, not necessarily is untranslatability dealt with dramaturgically? And as exceptional human beings but as one type of thirdly, at a methodological level, the symposium earthbound critter amongst others that need to survive enquires into the role of cultural translation in the in the severely damaged and increasingly dangerous pedagogy and curricular conception of dramaturgy. conditions of our own making, the ravenous excesses How to teach and practice dramaturgy in a cross- of the Capitalocene. As poets we have to find radical cultural, transnational environment? and critical alternatives to our Beautiful Soul habits of The symposium starts with a meeting of partner aesthetic distancing from/objectification of and universities, a joint viewing of two performances, immersion in “Nature”. We have to face Gaia with a followed by a day of presentations and discussions new respons-ability. What kind of ethos, modes and with an invited academic reference group, using the voices, what kinds of political interventions, can one performances as a common point of departure and try to map for the earthbound poet? And who cares? reference. Marlene van Niekerk is one of South Africa’s most The symposium is open to students at the BA and MA influential and thought provoking writers. She is a levels, as well as to students in the PhD-program. poet, novelist as well as professor of Literature at the Research master students can earn credits for full University of Stellenbosch. Her most renowned works attendance, completing preparatory readings and are Triomf (1994), Agaat (2004) and Memorandum (2006), writing a 800-word symposium review (1 EC). all translated into several languages, amongst them Attendance is free, but please register by sending an Dutch and English. Recently she has published a email to: [email protected], more info on the ASCA volume of poetry called Kaar, which deals extensively website. with the relation between people, the environment and politics (2014). RESONANCES OF THE WORK OF JUDITH BUTLER For more information, please see: Critical Theory in the Humanities http://www.uva.nl/en/disciplines/literary- From April 5-7, 2017, the interdisciplinary Research studies/home/components- Institute for the Humanities CLUE+ at Vrije Universiteit centrecolumn/events/events/content/folder/symposia/2 Amsterdam organises a three-day international conference 016/09/farewell-to-the-beautiful-soul-a-poetics-for-the- on resonances of the work of the critical theorist and anthropocene.html philosopher Judith Butler. www.butleramsterdam.com Special guest speakers: Judith Butler, Achille Mbembe, Jean- DRAMATURGIES OF CULTURAL TRANSLATION Luc Nancy Amsterdam, 11-12 October, 2016. ASCA, NICA, ACGS Keynote speakers: Adriana Cavarero, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Symposium organized by Sruti Bala, Kati Rottger and Amelia Jones, Charlotte Witt Ricarda Franzen. The aim of the conference is to increase awareness of This symposium explores performance as a site of the relevance of critical theory for the whole of the cultural translation. The concept of cultural translation humanities and to promote interdisciplinary thinking. extends beyond the common understanding of The breadth of Butler’s work – touching upon translation as the transference of meaning from one questions of identity in philosophy, ethics, politics, language into another and the process of finding religion, and the arts – can serve as a stepping stone linguistic equivalences. It includes corporeal, for a fruitful intellectual exchange between the various historical, and epistemological aspects of cross-cultural disciplines. In this spirit, the conference will be communication, and enquires into its conditions and supplemented with a number of student initiatives, limits. These pose complex challenges in the including workshops, a graduate seminar, and a film performing arts, as the endeavour of cultural programme. The conference will close with a translation is inseparable from poetic and performance programme at the Stedelijk Museum dramaturgical conventions of staging. The symposium Amsterdam. addresses three sets of questions in relation to the We invite contributions that engage with, or are dramaturgies of cultural translation. inspired by, Butler’s critical thinking in all its facets, Since dramaturgy is understood and used in very including (but explicitly not limited to) the following different ways in different contexts, it remains fields of inquiry: important to firstly inquire into its modalities and • Ethics: The Constitution of the Self principles in the process of cultural translation in • Politics and the Performative

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• Gender and Critical Theory candidates receive feedback on their proposals and get • Performativity and Self-Fashioning in the Arts workshops from, for example, laureates or (former) We welcome submissions from established academics, commission members. Help with the budget is also early-career researchers, and doctoral students. Paper provided. proposals of 300 to 500 words, accompanied by a short Meetings are organized on 6 and 20 September, 4 biography (100 words), can be submitted via our October and 8 November. website (www.butleramsterdam.com) before October Researchers planning to submit a Veni proposal are 1, 2016. Acceptance will be announced by December 1, welcome to apply sending an email to subsidie- 2016. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes in [email protected]. We ask you to upload or send us your CV duration. The estimated fee for participation is 50 along with your application. We look at your CV to euros, plus another 50 euros for an optional conference indicate whether you can be considered for this dinner. particular grant. If we think you might be more Convening committee: Marieke Berkers, Wouter Goris, eligible for another grant we will contact you. Annemie Halsema, Katja Kwastek, Roel van den Oever.

ACLA 2017 - UTRECHT UNIVERSITY The American Comparative Literature Association's 2017 Annual Meeting (co-sponsored by ASCA) will take place at Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands July 6-9, 2017. The ACLA's annual conferences have a distinctive structure in which most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day for three days of the conference to foster extended discussion. Some eight-person (or smaller) seminars meet just the first two days of the conference. This structure allows each participant to be a full member of one seminar, and to sample other seminars during the remaining time blocks. Depending on space availability, we may also consider accepting a limited number of one-day seminars, especially if they are innovative either in presentation format or in terms of theme. The conference also includes plenary sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions, and other events. Our online portal is open for paper submissions from Sept. 1 - 23. http://www.acla.org/node/add/paper

VENI SUPPORT TRACK Application deadline: January 2017 The VENI grant is meant for researchers who received their PhD no more than 3 years before the deadline of the call. It is an individual grant and you are completely free in choosing your own subject. As a researcher you are eligible for a Veni when: You received your PhD no longer than 3 years ago. You have a strong CV for a researcher that is just starting out (i.e. you have published peer-reviewed articles in respected journals, received other grants or fellowships, participated in research projects abroad, a dissertation that is published or accepted for publication). The Faculty of Humanities offers a Support track for interested scholars. During the track, candidates prepare their individual applications with the assistance of their peers and the advisors of the grant team. The track consists of an information meeting and three plenary meetings. During these meetings the