Dr. Ella Shohat was celebrated by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's College at Oxford University this June 2018 in a series of events.
Wednesday, 13 June, 2-4pm
Lecture: The Question of Judeo-Arabic: Nation, Partition, and the Linguistic Imaginary
Speaker: Ella Shohat
Comments by Yuval Evri
Investcorp Lecture Theatre, St Antony's College
This lecture examines linguistic belonging as invented within national and colonial itineraries. More specifically, it explores the genealogy of the concept of “Judeo-Arabic language” and its axiomatic definition as a cohesive (specifically Jewish) unit separate from Arabic, and classifiable under the historically novel rubric of isolatable “Jewish languages” severed from their neighboring dialect/languages. Does the notion of “Judeo-Arabic” correspond to the designation by the speakers of that language themselves or rather to a paradigm influenced by post-Enlightenment Judaic studies and Jewish nationalism? And in the wake of the colonial partition of Palestine / Israel and the displacement from Arabic-speaking cultural geographies, how should we regard the salvage project for an “endangered Judeo-Arabic?” What are the phantasmic aspects of a conceptual framework that has left a linguistic practice both rejected and desired?
Wednesday, 13 June, 5pm
Book Event: On the Arab Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements
Speakers:
Jacqueline Rose (Birkbeck)
Kfir Cohen (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute)
Moshe Behar (The University of Manchester)
Hakem Al-Rustom (Michigan)
Ella Shohat (New York University)
Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College
Thursday, 14 June, 2:30 – 4:30pm
Workshop: Memory, Memoirs, and History
Convenors: Ella Shohat and Avi Shlaim
Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College
Event poster
Event Poster
