Apply by December 16h to take advantage of Language Conversation Practice over January Break

MEI has partnered with NaTakallam to connect language learners with refugees and displaced people who provide conversation practice in their native  Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish! MEI is offering scholarships that cover 10 fully-funded sessions with a NaTakallam Conversation Partner.  Whether you want to practice what you’re learning in an existing class, prepare for future research or job opportunities, speak with family and friends, or just have fun, NaTakallam can help you reach your goals. 

Languages available:

• Arabic (MSA, Levantine, Iraqi, Egyptian) 

• Persian (Farsi and Dari)

• Kurdish  

What the scholarship includes: 10 fully-funded 1-hour personalized sessions with a NaTakallam Conversation Partner in the language/dialect of your choice.

About NaTaKallam: Since 2015, NaTakallam has grown into a global social enterprise that has provided over 6000 students with unique online language practice and cultural exchange allowing refugees from the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa to self-generate income.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

With Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine.
Discussant: Ali Mirsepassi, New York University.

My experience of directing an Iranian studies center in southern California provided me with unique opportunities to work with members of the Iranian American community, cultural associations, and donors. The linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversities of the local Iranian community bode well for exploring the different facets of Iranian culture in a university setting. But the promise and potential were at times weighed down by an impulse to contain and/or disavow Islam as a constitutive part of Iranian cultural legacy and by other effects of diaspora. In my presentation I will explore the ramifications of tensions that at times risked derailing the mission of an academic center devoted to the study of Iran. Understanding the anxieties manifested at the intersection of the academy and the community could pave the way for more robust engagements with ideas of Iran in the US academy today.

Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities, Professor of Comparative Literature, and the Director of the Humanities Core Program at the University of California, Irvine. She served as the inaugural Director of the Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture from 2006 to 2014, Interim Director of the Culture and Theory PhD Program 2015-16, and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature 2016-2019. She was Dean of Humanities at McMaster University 2003-2006 and Associate Dean of Humanities at the University of Alberta 1999-2002.

Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature, the literature of Iranian exile and diaspora, and contemporary Iranian women’s writing. Among her publications are Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History, Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet Of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman And Feminine Pioneer Of New Persian Poetry co-edited with Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity. She translated the late Taghi Modarressi’s last novel, The Virgin of Solitude from Persian into English.

Thursday, December 5th @5 PM
Columbia Maison Française

A panel conversation with Fatemeh Shams, Omid Tofighian and Behrouz Boochani.

There is a sense of separation and detachment to every experience of leaving the home to which one feels attached. To this end, forced migration and exile could be considered as a never-ending sense of detachment and separation from one’s homeland; a continual and unstoppable voyage. The traumatic experience of border-crossing, temporality in transient destinations, and a perpetual sense of alienation from the host country(s) are all elements shared by refugee and exiled authors. In this panel, the award-winning, exiled poet-scholar, Fatemeh Shams will be in conversation with the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author, Behrouz Boochani and the literary scholar and translator of Boochani’s work, Omid Tofighian to discuss such themes as one of the major consequences of the Iranian revolution.

This event is cosponsored by: the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life; the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies; the Persian Heritage Foundation; the Middle East Institute; and the Iranian Studies Initiative at NYU.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

Book talk with the author of The Baghdad Clock, Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Featuring:

Shahad Al Rawi: author of the IPAF shortlisted novel The Baghdad Clock. Shahad Al Rawi is an Iraqi writer, born in Baghdad in 1986. She completed secondary school in Baghdad before moving with her family to Syria, where she obtained an MA in Administration. She is currently studying for a PhD in Anthropology and Administration and lives in Dubai. The Baghdad Clock, her first novel, was published in Arabic in 2016.

Luke Leafgren: translator of The Baghdad Clock and Professor of Arabic at Harvard University

About the Book: Baghdad, 1991. A young Iraqi girl and her best friend find themselves living in war-torn Baghdad during the first Gulf War. Populated by a host of colorful characters, we share the two girls' dreams, music, school life and first loves as they grow up in a city torn apart by civil war. And as the bombs fall, the international sanctions bite and friends begin to flee the country, the city services collapse while abandoned dogs roam the streets and fortune-tellers thrive amidst the fear and uncertainty. This poignant debut novel will spirit readers away to a world they know only from the television, revealing just what it is like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and showing how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.

A panel and roundtable with Daho Djerbal (University of Algiers), Mohamed Amer Meziane (Religion), Mamadou Diouf (MESAAS), Mahmood Mamdani (Anthropology, Political Science), and Madeleine Dobie (French).
To the extent that they identify Africa to subsaharan Africa and the Arab world to the Middle East, predominant global geographies tend to marginalize North Africa. This workshop is part of a larger project which aims at questioning the geographic divides of Africa and the Middle East. The ‘‘North Africa in Africa’’ project questions the marginalization of North Africa in Western-centered global geographies. This specific workshop is focused on the Algerian case. It will address the following question: if one takes into account the centrality of both the colonization and the decolonization of Algeria in the colonization and the decolonization of Africa and the Third World, how might the postcolonial predicament of the African continent and the Third World be re-conceptualized? How are we to think about what is happening today in this country as something else than a simple extension of the ‘‘Arab Spring’’?

Section I: Critical Perspectives, (2:10 - 4:30 PM)
Daho Djerbal (University of Algiers)
Mohamed Amer Meziane (Religion)
Mamadou Diouf (MESAAS)
Mahmood Mamdani (Anthropology and Political Science)

Section II: The Algerian Uprising Today (4:45 - 6 PM)
Roundtable moderated by Madeleine Dobie (French)

Register here.

This event is organized by the Institute for Religion,Culture and Public Life and cosponsored by the Middle East Institute.

The Persian Conversation Hour is a weekly opportunity for Persian-speaking students of all levels to meet and interact with each other, instructors, TAs, and native Persian speakers from the local community. Learners of all levels are welcome so long as they have some proficiency, however basic, in Persian language. The subject of conversation is entirely free and determined by the participants, their skill levels and their interests. The conversation is often broken up into smaller groups when practicing with learners of a similar level is more beneficial. Lunch is served.

The Halaqa ʿArabiyya (Arabic Circle) provides extra language practice for Arabic language students in a conversational setting. Its core group of 5-11 attendees is composed of Columbia University and Barnard College students as well as some non-university affiliated individuals. The Arabic Circle is primarily held in Modern Standard Arabic, with some use of the Shami, Egyptian and Tunisian dialects.

Rubna Kana’an (University of Toronto)

This paper re-thinks the common perception of the Friday mosque as the “architectural monument par excellence.” The talk discusses the historical development of Friday mosques in the pre-modern Muslim world and the relationship between these architectural monuments and the ways in which contemporaneous Muslim jurists discussed and legislated for Friday prayer. By so doing, it questions the current art historical approach that mainly focuses on materiality and patronage while failing to take due consideration of the legal understanding of the functional as well as symbolic nature of the Friday mosque.

This lecture is part of the “Re-Approaching Architecture of the Lands of Islam” Series addressing the historiography of the field ‘Islamic Art’ by scoring the particular moments of ruptures that fractured its foundations.. Click here for more details.

Organized by Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor, Arts of Islam, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, in collaboration with the Center for Spatial Research at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the Middle East Institute of Columbia University, and the Centre for the Study of Muslim Societies at Columbia University.