We need a couple more papers to round out two sessions. Thanks!
CALL FOR PAPERS:
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Kurdish Geographies of Space, Place, and Power
Association of American Geographers
Los Angeles, CA
April 9-13, 2013
***SPONSORED BY THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA SPECIALTY GROUP***
Session organizers: Jessie Clark, University of Oregon, and Christian
Sinclair, University of Arizona
Events unfolding across the Middle East over the past two years are
lessons in geography; reminders that the ostensibly smooth cartographic
renderings of the nation-state space little reflect grounded practice,
desire, and identity. As boundaries shift, governments collapse, and the
flow of goods, people, and ideas expand, alliances emerge that challenge
our assumptions about the seamlessness of political power. Into the 21st
century, no one group has more challenged the popular global imaginary
than the Kurds, yet to date work on the Kurds remains sparse. Spread
across several countries, the Kurds constitute perhaps the largest
stateless nation in the world. Popular geopolitical narratives about the
Kurds pivot around the collective experience with war, displacement, and
imbalances of power. In reality, the Kurdish experience is anything but
collective – defined by a range of national affiliations as well as
linguistic, gendered, and ethnic identities.
To this end, this session seeks papers that can contribute to the still
small but growing body of work on the Kurds and KurdayetĂ® (Kurdishness)
in a way that sheds light on the diverse Kurdish geographies of space,
place, and power. A lack of institutional support in the US for Kurdish
Studies has limited the number and size of forums for exchange among
North American geographers (and scholars in general) about these issues.
This panel session is a response to this void and hopes to initiate a
fruitful dialogue on a people and place(s) often excluded from regional
studies on the Middle East and Europe. Papers may address but are not
limited to issues of: movement and mobility, conflict, nationalism,
stateness, gender, language, and human rights.
Please send an abstract of up to 250 words NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 15th,
2012 to the session organizers: Jessie H. Clark ([log in to unmask])
and Christian Sinclair ([log in to unmask]). Details of the
AAG conference can be found at: http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting.
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