For the eighth consecutive year, graduate students from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) invite you to attend a two-day conference, with keynote speaker Professor Susan Buck-Morss on February 23rd and 24th, 2017.

In 2010, the conference was entitled Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on the Middle East, South Asia, and African Studies. In 2011, it was Imaginary Geographies, in 2012, Sites of Modernity and in 2013 Paradigmatic Conflict and Crisis. For 2014, the conference had no theme but was organized around original work that spoke to the areas of study of the department. This approach was repeated in 2016, under the broad heading Beyond Boundaries. 

This year our conference is entitled “(De)Stabilizing Disciplines, (Re)Imagining Regions,” and seeks to problematize our modern disciplinary divisions and their epistemological underpinnings. Panelists will discuss sites of knowledge production that exist outside of disciplinary bounds, or which offer new strategies for sustained interdisciplinary study. We have sought ideas and research which can challenge and change our imaginations of ‘region’ and their concomitant spatial, intellectual and political boundaries.

If you are not presenting a paper but wish to attend, please RSVP by emailing Basma Radwan at bnr2110@columbia.edu and specify if you would like to attend Day 1, Day 2, and or the keynote lecture (end of day 2) 

For further inquiries, contact mesaasgradconference2017@gmail.com