Indiana University Press Journals Weblog

Jadaliyya: Middle East Masculinity Studies

NEW TEXTS OUT, PAUL AMAR

“Middle East Masculinity Studies: Discourses of ‘Men in Crisis,’ Industries of Gender in Revolution,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7.3 (Fall 2011): 36-71.

Jadaliyya: What made you write this article?

Paul Amar: I began drafting this article two years ago in order to seek ways out of the impasse in which the study of sexuality in the Middle East had become trapped. I was asking myself, how do we highlight aspects of coloniality, geopolitics, and power in the study of sexuality, without, on the one hand, reducing the social subjects of sexuality to the dupes, tools, or incitements of Empire or, on the other hand, celebrating “sexual minority identities” as the harbingers of emancipation or modernization? I felt both kinds of reductivism mirrored rather than challenged the legacies of domination, impoverishing the complexity of social history, the contentious nature of politics, and the creativity of culture. READ MORE.

Middle East Sexualities

JMEWS Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 2011, Middle East Sexualities

This special issue of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies presents work representative of new studies of sexuality in the Middle East and highlights the fact that gender is an inescapable part of such studies. Introduced and edited by Dina al-Kassim and Lara Deeb, the issue includes research articles by Paul Amar, Pardis Mahdavi & Christine Sargent, and Jared McCormick, and a piece by Ghassan Makarem that bridges activist and scholarly writing to narrate the rise of HELEM, a Lebanese lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights organization. Amar’s article maps the discourses of masculininty studies in the Middle East, and tracks the ways that international human rights discourse has given rise to new instrumentalities of the security state. Mahdavi and Sargent draw on ethnographic research in the United Arab Emirates to provide a critique of global rhetoric on human trafficking and an analysis of the ways in which the assumptions of that rhetoric are taken up by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) directed to assist trafficked women, particularly in the context of the United Arab Emirates. Finally, McCormick provides an ethnographic investigation into the figure of the bear in Lebanon and Syria in order to analyze the ways in which hypermasculinity is deployed by various actors in relation to a growing gay tourism industry.  The issue also includes book reviews of recent works that have emerged in the field and collectively demonstrate the growing importance of sexuality studies.

Diverse voices of emerging African Scholars: ACPR 1.2

ACPR Volume 1 Issue 2 is a special issue showcasing the works of African-based scholars. It is unique not only for its rich and diverse voices of young and emerging African scholars who directly experience the everyday African realities but also for their refreshing perspectives on how old African ways of making peace at the inter-personal and communal levels can provide real lessons for addressing some of the conflicts we face today in the continent.

The essays in this issue were presented in Dakar, Senegal, in December 2009 at the “Peacemaking in West Africa: Historical Methods and Modern Applications” conference, a part of the Peace Initiative in West Africa project of the West African Research Association (WARA). The conference brought together young scholars from Africa (especially across West Africa), Europe, and America and provided a unique opportunity for American and European scholars and policy experts to hear authentic African intellectual and scholarly voices; it also provided promising young scholars in Africa with an opportunity to make their mark on Western intellectual and policy debates on peace and conflict in Africa.

It is this spirit of making African voices on African issues heard beyond Africa that fostered the strong collaboration between Johns Hopkins University Professor Emeritus I. William Zartman, Co-Academic Coordinator of the WARA conference in Dakar, and several young emerging scholars based in Africa that resulted in this issue, and ACPR is honored to have Professor Zartman serve as guest editor of it.
Each of the articles included in the issue address traditional methods of peacemaking rooted in the rich and ancient cultures of the peoples of West Africa while also bringing unique perspectives to the conversation. The essays by Ken Ahorsu and Robert Ame, Tanto Richard Ndi, Henry Kam Kah, Moses Aluaigba, and David Udofia describe the peacemaking activities of senior councils among the Ewe in Ghana, the Bagam, and Bamenyam in Cameroon, the Cross River peoples in Nigeria and Cameroon, and the Tiv and Ibibio regions of Nigeria, respectively. The two-part paper by Felicia Ohwovoriole and Oluwaseum Foluso Phillips addresses micro and meso level marital conflicts among the Urhobo and Yoruba peoples of Nigeria. Three other papers examine present-day national level conflicts where traditional peacemaking practices are relevant. Kim Mahling Clark, an American-based Africanist, addresses Senegal’s secessionist revolt in Casamance, and Ogu Sunny Enemaku provides an illuminating analysis of Nigeria’s handing of the conflicts associated with public health policies to eradicate the avian influenza. Finally, Kehinde Bolaji’s paper examines the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework.

ACPR Volume 1 Issue 2 will be live on our website mid November.

Peace, War, Folklore–700 Scholars from around the world

Between October 12-15, more than 700 scholars from around the world convened at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus to explore the theme “Peace, War, Folklore.”  Representatives from IU Press and the Journal of Folklore Research (JFR) were on hand to greet members of the American Folklore Society during the society’s 2011 Annual Meeting.  

At panels and plenaries, meeting participants discussed the ways individuals and communities use expressive culture to protest inequities, mediate trauma, or resolve conflict. And in the book room, attendees browsed past issues of the journal, which has regularly explored how people make war and peace. Relevant articles in recent decades include:

 · “The Role of Oral Traditions in the War of National Liberation in Zimbabwe: Preliminary Observations” (Emmanuel Chiwome, JFR Vol. 27, No. 3, 1990)

· “The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and the Culture of Conflict” (Jeff Ferrell, JFR  Vol. 28, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Labor Song: A Reappraisal, 1991)

· “Palestinian Humor during the Gulf War” (Sharif Kanaana, JFR  Vol. 32, No. 1, 1995)

· “World Trade Center Jokes and Their Hungarian Reception” (Lajos Csaszi, JFR Vol. 40, No. 2, 2003)

· “The Traditionalization of Women's Dancing, Hegemony, and Politics in Malawi” (Lisa Gilman, JFR  Vol. 41, No. 1, 2004)

· “Narrative in Times of Crisis: AIDS Stories in Ghana” (Kwesi Yankah, JFR Vol. 41, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Advocacy Issues in Folklore, 2004)

· “‘Life in the TV’: The Visual Nature of 9/11 Lore and Its Impact on Vernacular Response” (Rosemary V. Hathaway, JFR  Vol. 42, No. 1, 2005)

Those who stopped by the IU Press table also got a look at our most recent issue (JFR 48:2, 2011). In this issue, Gregory Schrempp compares the work of Richard Wrangham and Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the process challenging rhetorical tendencies to pit science against traditional wisdom. Two articles investigate cultural performances in Central Asia: Svetlana Adonyeva and Laura J. Olson discuss Russian stories about believed supernatural events (bylichki), suggesting how they help narrators interpret past experience, claim particular social roles in the present, and offer prescriptions for future action; Maureen Pritchard explores the changing contexts and meanings of koshok, a ritualized expression of grief in present-day Kyrgyzstan. Finally, Timo Heimerdinger introduces readers to the Schnullerfee, a fairy that helps wean children from pacifiers in German-speaking areas; Heimerdinger’s article places this current parental strategy for dehabituation in the context of contemporary medicalization discourses.

Many passers-by at the AFS meetings also entered their names into a drawing for a free electronic subscription to the journal. This year’s winners are: Erik A. Aasland, Michael E. Bell, Rebecca Wilso, John Summerlot, and Judith Cohen.

The book room closed Saturday afternoon to make space for the dinner and live music that capped this year’s AFS meeting, but we welcome continued virtual perusal of (and additions to!) the journal’s many offerings. To learn how to contribute to the Journal of Folklore Research, visit www.indiana.edu/~jofr. To subscribe visit http://www.jstor.org/r/iupress.

Figure 1. The dummy tree at the University Hospital Dresden, August 2010. Photo by Norbert Kaiser and made available on Wikipedia via a Creative Commons license.
Journal of Folkore Research 48.2, page 200, "Pacifiers and Fairies," by Timo Heimerdinger

Textual Cultures 6.1

Figure 3, page 60, Textual Cultures 6.1 (2011)*

 

Textual Cultures 6.1 (2011) is out, in the mail, and online. I confess that it was for me a “special issue”. Tom Tanselle’s touching tribute to Jo Ann Boydston, who was one of the Society for Textual Scholarship’s early moving forces and a voice of inclusion, and David Greetham’s remembrance of Trevor Howard-Hill, a stalwart defender of all things bibliographic and a fellow editor, are unique additions to this issue. Beyond their exemplary scholarly contributions, Boydston and Howard-Hill gave selflessly to colleagues and to our field. Once you read Tom’s and David’s essays you will understand why they appear at the beginning of the issue.

What might draw some criticism, the diversity of the essays in this issue, especially in light of the number devoted to W. W. Greg (4.2 [2009]), is one of the things that made 6.1 such a delight to edit. Donald McKenzie, Nicolaus Maniacutius, Max Beerbohm, Henry Lawson, Auguste Poulet-Malassis, Ole Worm, and Thomas Percy made informative and wonderfully cross-referential issue-fellows in a remarkably “visual” collection of essays that depended on the careful scholarship of Peter Schillingsburg, Marie Thérèse Champagne, Sarah Davison, Paul Eggert, Nicolas Valazza, and Robert W. Rix. An essential part of this issue depended especially on the skills of our compositor, Tony Brewer, who made text and image flow together in magical ways — a syntagm one seldom sees in journals devoted to philology and textuality. READ MORE.

Wayne Storey, Editor, Textual Cultures

*Figure 3. The title-page of Beerbohm's copy of Yeats, Poems (1909), reprinted in Sotheby, Illustrated Catalogues ofthe Library and Literary Manuscripts of the Late Sir Max Beerbohm: Removed from Rapallo (1960a), 71.

Call for Papers: Racism, Colonialism, and Law

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts

Volume 6, Number 1 (Spring 2013)  Racism, Colonialism, and Law

Papers must be received by April 1, 2012 to be considered for publication in this issue.

Please send manuscript submissions to the editor: shortlidge.2@osu.edu.

See Style Guidelines (www.raceethnicity.org/styleguide.html) to prepare your document in accordance with the style guidelines of Race/Ethnicity.

Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website at http://www.raceethnicity.org/coverart.html for submission guidelines.

Contributions are requested for the Kirwan Institute/Office of Diversity and Inclusion journal, Race and Ethnicity. The objective of the journal is to bridge the divide between voices from the academy and practice. The journal therefore contains work that adheres to the experience and traditions of academia, as well as those which illustrate the priorities and experiences of activists. We welcome all contributions which fit into either one of these categories, as well as work that bridges them.

Guest Editor Iyiola Solanke, Associate Professor at Leeds University Law School in England, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity invite submissions for the first issue of its sixth volume, entitled “Racism, Colonialism and Law.”

The focus of this issue revolves around the ideas of racism, colonialism and law, considered together. We ask contributors to consider how ideas and practices associated with racism, colonialism and the law either help to reveal or unhelpfully obscure the social experience of marginalized groups. We also welcome reflections on the importance of critical social and legal interventions as responses to those everyday needs and realities that fall through the cracks.

We welcome contributions that engage questions such as the following:

1. What are the obstacles and opportunities for critical reflections on racism, colonialism, and law? Have blind spots emerged historically which are re-produced by concepts and categories used in debate and discussion? How does this affect the ability to identify contemporary occurrences of racial subordination and develop adequate political and legal responses?

2. What is gained or lost through the development of “universal” international legal frameworks and their application to peoples and groups with very particular histories and lives affected by racism, colonialism and law?

3. How does the legacy of colonialism and racism appear  in current rules, laws and practices  in everyday domains such as health, education, immigrant and refugee rights, employment, or other arenas? What major changes in legal doctrine and practice would authors welcome and why?

4. As an activist and practitioner working at the intersection of these issues, what have you been your experiences advocating for/initiating change (legal, community, etc.) at the intersections of issues of race, colonialism and law as defined in your locale?

Of course, this list is not meant to be exhaustive.  We welcome contributions that use these ideas as a point of departure as well as those which offer new insights not addressed here.

Call for Papers: Race, Ethnicity, and Appalachia

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts

Volume 6, Number 1 (Autumn 2012) Race, Ethnicity, and Appalachia

Papers must be received by January 15, 2012 to be considered for publication in this issue.

Please send manuscript submissions to the editor: shortlidge.2@osu.edu

See Style Guidelines (www.raceethnicity.org/styleguide.html) to prepare your document in accordance with the style guidelines of Race/Ethnicity.

Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website at http://www.raceethnicity.org/coverart.html for submission guidelines.

Though referring to a specific geographic space, the word “Appalachia” often conjures a set of stereotypes stemming from the notion that Appalachia is an isolated and homogenous region when in fact international migrations and markets have been true presences for more than 100 years.

We invite proposals from scholars, activists/practitioners, and creative non-fiction/fiction writers who consider a host of issues evoked by “Appalachia.”

 We invite papers that consider the following questions.

• What are the political and ideological implications of the gap between the demographic realities of Appalachia and outsiders’ perceptions of those same demographics? Do these perceptions have an impact on policymaking decisions that affect the region, including resource allocation?

• If misinformation and misperceptions about Appalachia have real consequences in terms of policy and resource allocation, in what ways are activists/practitioners working to counter these consequences?  In other words, what does it mean to do activist/practitioner work “on the ground” in Appalachia? 

• As the touchstone of many of the “white poverty” stories we tell ourselves, it’s important to consider the particular metaphorical space Appalachia occupies within these stories. If the realities that potentially call these narratives into question were more widely known and appreciated, then what? What lessons about race, culture, and class should we be drawing from the stories we tell ourselves about the Appalachian experience?

• The plight of Appalachia's natural resources defines Appalachian studies and politics. That is, national and international companies routinely create a boom and bust cycle in the region to the extreme detriment of the land, culture and political influence of the area.  How do these cycles influence cultural and political realities? What kinds of interventions by activists and practitioners do the misuses of natural resources demand?  In what ways does the notion of Appalachia as a region of great natural beauty often repress dialogues about the misuse of Appalachia’s natural resources?

• How are concerns of race/ethnicity implicated in geographical circumstances?