ZMO News

Tuesday, 30 October 2018

Monday, 19 November, 5 pm, ZMO
Pacta Sunt Servanda: Socialism, Islamism, Neoliberalism and Rent Conflicts in Egypt
Lecture by Yahia Shawkat (Co-founder of 10 Tooba, Berlin) opening up this winter term's Urban Studies Seminar The Urban Spatialities of Religion in the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia.

ZMO is pleased to announce the launch and first event of this winter term's Urban Studies Seminar organised by ZMO fellows Jan Brauburger, Claudia Ghrawi and Nora Lafi. The aim of the new edition of the seminar is to propose critical reflections on the relationship between urban spaces and religion by bringing together scholars who work on a variety of places and times and explore religion as a vector in complex processes of the social production of space. In this approach, religion is not seen as an external element floating above urban spaces but as one of the multifaceted forces that take part in the socially constructed definition of space itself. The presentations thus consider not only mosques, churches, synagogues and shrines, but also other public spaces and their interrelation with religious influxes as well as notions of propriety, intimacy and all the spaces of in-betweenness.

The Seminar starts off on November 19th with a lecture by Yahia Shawkat (co-founder of the interdisciplinary research group 10 Tooba, Berlin) entitled "Pacta Sunt Servanda: Socialism, Islamism, Neoliberalism and Rent Conflicts in Egypt". In his talk Shawkat will give an overview on and analyse the historical development of rent and tenancy laws in sway of different religious and political ideologies and groups in Egypt.

Further Events

Thursday, 29 November, 5 pm, ZMO
Hymens, Sex, and Money: Interrogating the Economics of Virginity in the Middle East
Lecture by Ebtihal Mahadeen (University of Edinburgh) in the framework of the ZMO-Colloquium Performing Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.

If, as Lama Abu-Odeh argues, “the discourse on gender and the discourse on virginity in Arab culture overlap so broadly that they are hardly distinguishable” (Abu-Odeh, 2010, 917), then understanding the ideology of virginity and the various technologies used to maintain it is essential to understanding sexual politics in Arab patriarchies. In Jordan, the hymen is admitted as the physical marker of female virginity and its presence is of paramount importance to certifying unmarried women’s chastity, adherence to socio-sexual norms, and economic value as potential wives. But it is within the context of marriage that...

Tenders & Calls

Position as Public Relations Assistant to the Director
Closing Date: 15 November 2018

ZMO is looking for a new Public Relations Assistant to the Director (50%, TVöd E13, start of work: 1 January 2019). As PR Assistant to the Director one of your main tasks will be to supervise the second phase of the relaunch of ZMO's website and corporate design in close collaboration with a design agency. Further duties comprise among others the responsibility for the centre's public appearance with special focus on press and social media, the maintenance and cultivation of contacts to newspapers and journalists as well as work for ZMO's internal reporting system.

New Publications

Steffen Wippel, Andrea Fischer-Tahir (eds.)
Jenseits etablierter Meta-Geographien

Nomos 2018, 354 pp.

With contributions by ZMO fellows Ulrike Freitag, Katrin Bromber, Britta Frede, Dietrich Reetz and Florian Riedler.

Egodi Uchendu
Islam in the Niger Delta, 1890-2017

Studien zum Modernen Orient 32
Klaus Schwarz Verlag 2018, 340 pp.

Jamil Dehlavi
The Blood of Hussain (DVD)

Ali Nobil Ahmad contributed to this DVD edition of Jamil Dehlavi's film with the recording of a 66-minute public lecture given in 2018 in London. The talk explores the cultural, artistic and political background of Jamil Dehlavi’s films.

Ulrike Freitag
Jidda

In: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson (eds.): The Encyclopedia of Islam Three. Brill, Leiden/Boston 2018, 118

Ahmed G.S. Sukker
The PA's Security Role and Youth Political Representation as Pathways for a Workable Palestinian National Reconciliation Deal

In Lorenzo Kamel, Asli Selin Okyay (eds.): Realizing Youth Potential in the Mediterranean: Unlocking Opportunities, Overcoming Challenges, IAI Research Studies 2018, Issue 2, pp. 35-46.

Norman Saadi Nikro
Returning to Accra: Between Nina Simone, Ama Ata Aidoo, Fassbinder, and the Cockettes

Review of Malik Gaines' Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible ( New York University Press 2017) by Norman Saadi Nikro. In: Tohu Magazine 2018.

Who's talking? - ZMO in the Media

Florian Coppenrath
Hip-Hop in Russland

ZMO associate Florian Coppenrath about the history of rap and Hip Hop culture in Russia. The article also includes a list of classic and contemporary songs embedded
via Youtube.

Dekóder, 11 October 2018.

Nils Riecken
"Islam" as an Epistemic Field: Imperial Entanglements and Orientalism in the German-Speaking World since 1870