We would like to invite you to a guest lecture by Sanabel Abdelrahman entitled “Palestinian Magical Realism as Resistance Literature” on Monday, 17 June 2024, 6:15 pm.

The talk will give an overview of magical realism within Palestinian literature. Specifically, magical realism will be approached as a literary mode used to resist colonial plunders, such as that of Palestinians’ physical spaces, memory, culture, and collective identity. This approach shows that magical realism, with its strands of surrealism, political Gothicism, science (and speculative) fiction, fantasy, and absurdism, resist the ongoing ramifications of the Nakba manifested in the distortion of physical structures (including Palestinian bodies) as well as metaphysical ones, such as identity, memory, empirical senses, temporality, and hope.

In her presentation, Sanabel Abdelrahman will reference some recurring figures and tropes from Palestinian folktales and contemporary literary works, such as ghosts, mythical creatures, dreams, and nightmares, as well as processes, such as concretization (tamaddī), metamorphosis, resurrection, animism, and the manipulation of time to expound the magical-realistic impetus. Drawing on Palestinian literary texts such as Emile Habiby’s Sarāya Bint al-Ghūl ("Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter", 1991), Elias Khoury’s Bāb al-Shams ("Gate of the Sun", 1998), and Sheikha Hlewa’s Ṭalabiyya C345 (2018) as well as the folktales in Qūl yā Ṭayr (2001), she will show, for example, that Palestinian ghosts emerging from the bodies of martyrs or water bodies are actors instilled with agency, actively reminding Palestinians collectively of the Nakba while disseminating ideas of future liberation.
Sanabel Abdelrahman holds a PhD in Arabic Studies, focusing on magical realism in Palestinian literature, from Philipps-Universität Marburg. She completed her BA and MA at the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She is a bilingual writer and publishes essays critiquing art and literature on platforms including Fus7a, al-Akhbar, 7iber, Jadaliyya, and NO NIIN. In the academic year 2023/24, she is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.

Venue:
Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies
Room RS 225, 2nd floor
Schlaunstraße 2, 48143 Münster

For a participation via Zoom, please contact AOR Dr. Barbara Winckler, barbara.winckler@uni-muenster.de.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2024, from 3 to 6 pm, two lectures will take place providing insights into the challenges and opportunities of collaborating with China. The detailed program, information about the lectures and speakers can be found here [de].

Registration is requested by July 3, 2024, at asienzentrum@uni-muenster.de.

On 13 May 2024, the official opening of the Asian Studies Centre took place at Heereman'scher Hof (University of Münster Professional School). In addition to the objectives and tasks of the Asian Studies Centre, the certificates and the new logo were presented. Prof. Dr. Carmen Brandt, Chairwoman of the German Association for Asian Studies (DGA) and Professor of Contemporary South Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, gave the keynote speech. The event concluded with the annual Study India Day with guest of honour Mubarak Bawa Syed, Consul General of India from Frankfurt.

 

Vom 19. April bis zum 4. Juli 2024 findet in Indien die Wahl für das Bundesparlament, den Lok Sabha, statt. Mit knapp einer Milliarde Stimmberechtigter ist die Wahl wie schon die Male zuvor eine logistische Herausforderung und innerhalb des Super-Wahljahres 2024 eine wichtige Kennmarke. Nichtsdestotrotz ist für viele hier in Deutschland Indien weiterhin eine große Unbekannte. Irgendetwas zwischen Yoga, heiligen Kühen und Callcentern. Der Indienwahlabend, gefördert vom Förderverein des Instituts für Politikwissenschaft (IfPol), setzt hier an und möchte die Wahl in Indien verständlicher machen und Interesse wecken, sich mehr damit zu beschäftigen. Es soll somit nicht nur um die aktuelle indische Politik und die Wahl gehen, sondern auch einen Bogen spannen warum dies auch für Deutschland eine wichtige Wahl ist. Der Abend wird geleitet von Anica Roßmöller, die vor ihrer aktuellen Tätigkeit als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am IfPol mehrere Jahre Referentin am Bayerisch-Indischen Zentrum für Wirtschaft und Hochschulen war.

Place: Institute for Political Science, SCH100.2 (Campus map)
Date: 07th May 2024, 7 PM (s.t.)

From December 2023 to April 2024, the Asian Studies Centre launched a logo competition. There were many creative and beautiful ideas. The three winners will be honored at the opening of the Asian Studies Centre on 13 May 2024.
The designs of the participants who agreed to publication can be found in an image gallery.
The Asian Studies Centre would like to thank everyone who took part in the competition!

18th - 20th April 2024

The long twentieth century has been regarded variably as a 'century of death.' The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed a proliferation of academic literature inquiring experiences of death and mourning. While much has been penned about the paradigms of death in the 'Global North,' there exists uneven temporalities in the academic reception of death, specifically in South Asian contexts. Death Studies as a discipline is widely conceived from within individualist, white Western hegemonies and through their appendant epistemologies that foreclose engagements with, among others, South Asian relationalities, belief systems, and established structures of mourning. The First International Conference on Critical South Asian Death Studies situates itself in this gap, paying heed to critical approaches to death, dying, grieving and end-of-life care in South Asia; mobilizing critical, intersectional, and radical contextualisms that emphasize distinct bio-medical, metaphorical, cultural, and social forms of death.

For further information and registration please visit the Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies' (PTTS) website.