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call for papers – writing assignment for the first 4 weeks

For this assignment, I invite submissions of 7-15 pages that explore the themes of “Memory and Archive: Curated Histories” and “Knowledge and Education: Spaces of Learning” with relation to the Middle East (sic!) through the lens of Berlin’s cultural institutions and scholarly spaces.

You may choose from the following five topic areas:

  1. Exhibiting the Middle East
  • How do museum exhibitions and cultural displays in Berlin represent or challenge mainstream narratives about the region?
  • Whose voices and histories are centered or marginalized in these curated presentations?
  • How do object choices, spatial design and institutional framing shape perspectives?
  1. Archiving Middle Eastern Pasts
  • What is revealed and concealed about Middle Eastern histories through Berlin’s archives and special collections?
  • How do archival practices of ordering, description and access enable or limit historical understanding?
  • In what ways do silences, omissions and archival absences distort or enrich collective memory?
  1. Memorializing Middle Eastern Trauma
  • How do Berlin’s memorial sites, monuments and public installations engage with cultural trauma, displacement and loss from Middle Eastern conflicts?
  • Whose suffering and experiences are commemorated or rendered invisible?
  • What narrative strategies facilitate connection, witnessing or unresolved tensions?
  1. Constructing Middle East Knowledge
  • How do Berlin’s universities, think tanks and academic spaces shape and disseminate knowledge about the Middle East?
  • In what ways do theoretical lenses, methodologies and scholar positionalities open up or limit understanding?
  • What counternarratives, interdisciplinary approaches and situated knowledges offer new critical perspectives?
  1. Teaching and Programming the Middle East
  • How do pedagogical approaches, public programs and cultural initiatives in Berlin facilitate or impede engagement with Middle Eastern topics?
  • What challenges arise in translating academic expertise for broader audiences?
  • How do innovative practices re-frame understanding or reinscribe problematic assumptions?

I welcome original perspectives that provide nuanced insights into how memory, knowledge, and understanding of the Middle East are curated, constructed and disseminated in Berlin’s cultural-academic spaces.

Deadline: Thu Nov 8, 2 PM. Submit as a pdf, including a cover page and indicating one of five topic areas, too, by e-mail from the zedat or @fu-berlin.de e-mail address to my email address, use the subject “porcupine”.