KURDISH STUDIES CONFERENCE

Friday, 7 June 2019

8:45 – 9:20 Welcome

• 8:45 – 9:00 Breakfast (served)

9:00-9:20 Introductory Remarks

• Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Northwestern University
• Metin Serbest, Esq. (Law '05)       

9:20-10:20 Session I: Colonialism and Violence I

• Chair: Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Northwestern University
• Erdem İlter – UCLA, Department of History
  • The Sheikh Said Rebellion and the Formation of Modern Turkey 1925 – 1938
• Matan Cohen – Columbia University, Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies
  • Dependence, Independence & Interdependence: Political Belonging Beyond Unitary Sovereignty and (Neo)Colonial Walling
• Bilgesu Sümer – University of Massachusetts, Department of Political Science 
  • Political life of P’ling’s Dead Body: Politicization of the Dead in Turkey

10:05–10:20 Q&A

10:20-10:30 Coffee Break

 

10:30-11:50 Session II: Colonialism and Violence II

• Chair:  İpek Yosmaoğlu, Northwestern University
• Maya Avis (and Oren Ziv) – Graduate Institute of Geneva
  • The Non-Citizen Journalist: Narrating Colonial State Power and Constructing the Boundaries to Vision
• Nasser Abourahme – New York University, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
  • Camp/Colony: On the Vanishing Horizon of Settler Permanence
• Latif Taş – SOAS University of London, School of Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Beyond the Colonial State: Kurdish Alternative Justice and State Building
• Charlotte Watelet – EHESS, Paris – Anthropology and Political Science
  • Kurds among Kurds: An Ethnography of a Refugee Camp

11:30-11:50 Q&A

11:50-12:00 Lunch (served)

12:00-12:45 Keystone Speech

• Charles Mills, The Graduate Center, CUNY

1:00-2:20 Session III: Law, The Peace Process, and Transitional Justice

• Chair:  Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University
• Adam Sitze - Amherst College, College of Law
• South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Genealogy   
• Nisan Alıcı- - Ulster University, Transitional Justice
• Transitional Justice in an Ongoing Conflict: A Victim-Survivor Centred Analysis of Transitional Justice Mechanisms in the Context of the Kurdish Conflict
• Emilio Dabed - Visiting Fellow at Osgoode, York University Law School
• Palestinian Legal Activism: Between Liberation and the ‘Desire’ of Statehood
• Sinem Arslan - University of Essex, Michael Nicholson Centre for Conflict and Cooperation
• Transborder Ethnic Kin and the Dynamics of Peace Processes: Insights from the Kurdish Conflict

2:00-2:20 Q&A

2:20–2:30 Coffee Break

2:30-3:50 Session IV: Political Economy

• Chair:  Diego Arispe-Bazán, Northwestern University
• Andy Clarno – University of Illinois at Chicago, Sociology and African America Studies
  • The Specter and Labor of the Black Poor in South Africa after Apartheid
• Veli Yadırgı – London School of Economics 
  • The Three Pillars of De-development in Kurdistan: Forced Displacement, Cultural Annihilation, and Economic Expropriation
• Deniz Duruiz - Northwestern University, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs
  • The Kurdish Labor Intermediary: The Symptom of Turkey’s Racialized and Gendered Labor Regime
• Patrick Lewis - University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology
  • Teachers, Schools, and Changing State Value Regimes: The Politics and Political-Economy of Memurluk (Being a Civil Servant) in North Kurdistan

3:30–3:50 Q&A

3:50-4:00 Coffee Break 

4:00-5:20 Session V: Environmental Contestations

• Chair:  Zekeria Ahmed Salem, Northwestern University
• Ken Salo – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Department of Urban & Regional Planning
  • Contesting Liberal Legality: Informal Legal Cultures in Post-Apartheid South Africa’s Privatization Seafood Fishery
• Allan Hassaniyan – University of Exeter, Kurdish Studies
  • Securitization of Environmental Activism in Iranian Kurdistan 
• Pınar Dinç (and Lina Eklund)  - Lund University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
  • An Interdisciplinary Approach to Forest Fires and Conflicts in the Middle East
• Arda Bilgen – Independent Scholar
  • Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full? An Appraisal of the Four Decades of Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP)

5:00–5:20 Q&A

Saturday, 8 June 2019

9:00-10:20 Session VI: Nationalism and Kurdish Women

• Chair: Deniz Duruiz, Northwestern University
• Madiha Pınar Sorma – University of Washington Seattle, Gender, Department of Women and Sexuality Studies
  • Denationalizing the Body: Kurdish Women’s Guerilla Resistance towards a Stateless Freedom
• Nadje Al-Ali - Brown University, Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs
  • Nationalism and Feminism: Comparative Perspectives
• Özüm Yeşiltaş - Texas A&M University - Commerce, Department of Political Science
  • Nationalism and Women’s Agency: Constructions of Feminist Nationalist Identity in the Kurdish Movements in Iraq and Syria
• Stanley Thangaraj - City College of New York, Department of Anthropology
  • Deploying "Woman" and Managing Difference: Transnational Negotiations of Diasporic Identity

10:00-10:20 Q&A

 

10:20-10:30 Coffee Break

10:30–11:35 Session VII: The Kurdish Political Movement

• Chair:  Danny Postel, Northwestern University
• Elif Genç – The New School for Social Sciences, Department of Political Science
• Kurdish Movement’s Realpolitik: The Case of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Gülay Kılıçaslan - York University, Department of Sociology
• Situating Kurdish Forced Migration as a Contentious Political Terrain in Turkey 
• Sardar Saadi – University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology 
• Sovereignty in Neighborhood: Turkish Islamic Hegemony versus Kurdish Democratic Autonomy in Sur, Diyarbakır

11:15–11:35 Q&A

11:35–1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:00 Session VIII: Comparison Workshops

2:00-3:00 Session IX: Workshop Presentations - 10 mins. for each group 

3:00-3:15 Coffee Break

3:15-4:00 Closing Session: Kurdish Studies From a Postcolonial Perspective

Friday, 1 June 2018

The inaugural Kurdish Studies Conference, held June 1 and 2, 2018, focused on three issues:

• The development of Kurdish Studies as a field
• The idea of Kurdistan and its transformation in relation to political and cultural change in the region and diaspora
• The possibilities and dilemmas of Kurdish politics across the Middle East region

9:00 a.m. Welcome

• Bruce Carruthers, Buffett Institute
• Metin Serbest, Esq., Northwestern Law'05
• Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Buffett Institute 

9:30–10:30 a.m. Session I: The Development of Kurdish Studies 

• Chair: Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Buffett Institute
• Michael Gunter, Tennessee Technological University
  • Kurdish Studies in the United States
• Özlem Belçim Galip, University of Oxford
  • Kurdish Studies as a De-Territorialized Field: Transformations and Discontinuities
• Welat Zeydanlıoğlu, Kurdish Studies Network (KSN), the Kurdish Studies Journal
  • Kurdish Studies: Recent and Future Perspectives

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Session II: New Perspectives in Kurdish Studies 

• Chair: İpek Yosmaoğlu, Northwestern University
• Nilay Özok-Gündoğan, Florida State University
  • Reconsidering the Notion of “Autonomy” in Historical Writings on Ottoman Kurdistan
• Veli Yadırgı, University of London
  • The Political Economy of Turkey's Kurdish Question
• Deniz Duruiz, Columbia University
  • Border as an Epistemological Device in Kurdish Studies 

1:30–2:50 p.m. Session III: The Faces and Effects of Violence in Bakur

• Chair: Sinan Erensü, Northwestern University
• Yesim Yaprak Yıldız, University of Cambridge
  • (Dis)avowal of State Violence: Confessions of Turkish State Actors on Atrocities Against Kurds
• Mehmet Gürses- Florida Atlantic University
  • War, Religion, and the Kurds: The Secularizing Potential of Armed Conflict
• Zeynep Oğuz, CUNY
  • Violent Collisions: Geology, Oil, and Subterranean Power in Turkey’s Kurdistan
• Emre Turkut, Ghent University
  • Non-Discrimination, Minority Rights and Self-Determination

3:30–4:30 p.m. Session IV: Kurdish Movements in Rojava and Sinjar

• Chair: Danny Postel, Northwestern University
• Sean Lee, Northwestern University
  • The Evolution of Rojava: Nation building in wartime Syria
• Amy Austin Holmes, American University of Cairo
  • The Political Ambitions of Kurdish Militias in Syria and Iraq
  • Geopolitics and Gender Dynamics: Comparing the YPG in Kobane and the YBS in Sinjar
• Güney Yıldız, University of Cambridge
  • How does the Kurdish movement in Syria recruit members of the Arab majority and other minorities to their project?

5:00–5:40 p.m. Session V: Comparative Perspectives on Conflict Resolution

• Chair: Ipek Demir, University of Leicester
• Haluk Baran Bingöl, Kennesaw State University
  • Frontiers of Kurdish Paradiplomacy and Self-Governance: A Comparative Analysis of Security, Development and Conflict
• Onur Bakıner, Seattle University
  • Why do Peace Negotiations Succeed or Fail? Legal Commitment, Transparency and Inclusion in Colombia (2012-2016) and Turkey (2012-2015)

Saturday, 2 June 2018

9:00–10:00 a.m. Session VI: The predicament of Kurds in Rojhelat and Başûr

• Chair: Fatma Müge Göcek, University of Michigan
• Peshawa Abdulkhaliq Muhammed, University of Sulaimani
  • Iraqi Kurdistan and Its Changing Region
• Kamal Soleimani, Queens College, NY
  • The Predicament of the Eastern Kurds
• Ahmad Mohammadpour, University of Massachusetts
  • Orientalizing the East: Iranian Kurdistan and the Construction of Colonial Subject

10:30–11:50 a.m. Session VII: Spatial, Cultural and Political Imaginaries

• Chair: Senem Aslan, Northwestern University and Bates College
• Leyla Neyzi, Northwestern University and Sabancı University
  • Displaced Rural Youth in Diyarbakir and “The Place that has No (Public) Name.”
• Diana Hatchett, University of Kentucky
  • Sovereignty and Ethical Life in Kurdistan and Kurdish Studies
• Janroj Yılmaz Keleş, Middlesex University
  • Return Mobilities of Highly Skilled British-Kurdish Young People to a Post-Conflict Region
• Vera Eccarius-Kelly, Siena College
  • Cleansing the Galleries: A Museum in the Imagination of Kurdish Diaspora Artists and Activists

1:30–2:30 p.m. Session VIII: Transforming the Politics of Non-Recognition

• Chair: Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Buffett Institute
• Naif Bezwan, University College London
  • Transforming the Politics of Non-Recognition: The International Community and the Kurdish Pursuit of Self- Determination
• Ipek Demir, University of Leicester
  • The Global South in the Global North: Kurdish Diaspora in Europe as Transnational Indigenous Resistance
• Abbas Vali, Boğaziçi University (Emeritus)
  • Sovereign Power, Ruptured Domination and Kurdish Self-Government in the Middle East 

3:30–4:10 p.m. Session IV: The Dilemmas and Prospects of Kurdish Politics Across Borders  

• Chair: Sean Lee, Northwestern University
• Cengiz Güneş, The Open University
  
  • The Political Representation of Kurds in Turkey: Actors, Issues and Transformations
• David Romano, Missouri State University
  
  • “Foreign policy options of the KRG”

4:30–6:00 p.m. Closing Session

• Abbas Vali, Boğaziçi University (Emeritus)
• Fatma Müge Göcek, University of Michigan