Islam:
The Public and Private Spheres
A Social Research Conference
New School University
December 5-7, 2002

For the past three years, Social Research has engaged in an international exploration of the subject of  Privacy. Because the concept of privacy, and therefore of what constitutes a threat to privacy, is socially constructed, and as such contingent on particular cultures, a full understanding of what “privacy” means demands cross-cultural exploration.

Islam: The Public and Private Spheres, will be the third and final conference in this series, and will take place at New School University in December 2002.  This conference will look at the great variety in Muslim societies (both Shi’i and Sunni), and the way notions of public and private are understood and articulated across these societies. Definitions of public and private are central to the relationship between religion and state, as well the development of civil society.  These distinctions are also key to defining boundaries between the state, the community, the family, and the individual.  A primary concern will be addressing these distinctions in as many different societies as possible, including Islamic theocracies, non-theocratic Muslim states, and Islamic communities in the diaspora, whether these societies are located in the Middle East, South Asia, Indonesia, or the West.
 

THURSDAY, December 5^TH

Keynote Address:                                                                              6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Understandings of public and private in Islamic societies

Mohsen Kadivar, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran; Visiting Scholar, Islamic Legal Studies, Harvard Law School, Harvard University; author of Theories of State in Shiite Fiqh.
 

FRIDAY, December 6th

Islamic Law -  Boundaries and Rights: Case Studies                        9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
How are questions of boundaries and rights negotiated in states governed by Sharia?  How do these negotiations compare with those in predominantly Muslim states governed by civil law, or possibly Islamic communities in the diaspora?

Moderator: Talal Asad, Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Confirmed Speakers:
Baber Johansen, Director d'etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Brinkley Messick, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Roy Mottahedeh, Gurnery Professor of History, Harvard University
Frank Vogel, Two Holy Mosques Adjunct Professor of Islamic Legal Studies, Harvard Law School, Harvard University
 

Individual, Family, Community and State: Case Studies                     1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
What is the concept of the individual?  How are distinctions between public and private articulated within and across the boundaries of individual, family, community and state?

 Moderator: Leila Ahmed, Professor of Women's Studies and Religion, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University

Confirmed Speakers:
Juan Cole, Professor of History, University of Michigan
Nilufer Gole, Professor of Sociology, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Mehrangiz Kar, Human Rights Lawyer, Writer, Essayist, and Former Editor of the now-banned Zan literary review
Saba Mahmood, Assistant Professor of the History of Religions, the Divinity School, University of Chicago

Media and Information: Case Studies                                               6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

 Moderator: Kian Tajbakhsh, Senior Research Fellow, Milano Graduate School, New School University & , Sociology, Tehran University

Confirmed Speakers:
Jon Anderson, Professor of Anthropology, Catholic University
Geneive Abdo, Author and Former Tehran correspondent for The Guardian (London)
Hafez al-MiraziWashington Bureau Chief, Al-Jazeera Television
Hassan Mneimneh, Journalist and Co-director, Iraq Documentation Project

SATURDAY, December 7^TH

Representations of Privacy in Literature and Film: Case Studies                         10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
How are the concepts of privacy and the private sphere interpreted and represented in literature and film?  Art imitating life/life imitating art?

Moderator: Farhad Kazemi, Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies, New York University

Confirmed Speakers:
Hamid Dabishi, Professor and Chair of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University
Assia Djebar, Novelist, Filmmaker and Professor of French, New York University
Azar Nafisi, Visiting Professor and Director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Orhan Pamuk, Novelist 

Film Screening and Discussion             2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
WAITING (Iran, 1975), A film by Amir Naderi
The film will be followed by a discussion between Mr. Naderi and Hamid Dabashi focusing on how privacy is represented in this and other of his films.

Moderator: Hamid Dabashi

Contact the Social Research Conference Office
Social Research - New School University
65 Fifth Avenue, Room 375
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 229-2488    Fax: (212) 229-5476
E-mail: socres@newschool.edu
 

The conference is organized by Arien Mack, Editor of Social Research and Marrow Professor of Psychology at the Graduate Faculty of New School University.

The conference will be held at John L. Tishman Auditorium, New School University, 66 West 12th Street, New York City.

Admission $30or $7 per invidual session.  Full-time students with valid IDs are admitted free.

You may register here, or by fax, mail, or e-mail.  We accept MC and VISA as well as checks made payable to New School University.