Decolonizing the Digital

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On February 28th and March 1st 2013, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University will be hosting its annual graduate conference. Titled “Paradigmatic Conflict and Crisis,” the conference seeks to showcase the work of emerging scholars whose research is concerned with the spaces between conflicting, emerging, and established paradigms, and with new possibilities for our understanding of paradigm as both a discursive formation and a set of practices.

Baraza is happy to announce our participation in two exciting facets of this year’s conference.  First, Baraza will be co-sponsoring a roundtable discussion whose discussion topic resonates with our driving goals and interests as a digital space for the exchange of knowledge across disciplines and geographies.  “Decolonizing the Digital” will address questions surrounding the role of the Digital Humanities as an emerging field of knowledge in current and future scholarly research on the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Crucial to this discussion is the decentering of the Europhone/North American academy as the locus of work within the Digital Humanities.

In addition to co-sponsoring the “Decolonizing the Digital” roundtable discussion, Baraza will be involved in the creation of a digital volume showcasing exceptional papers presented at this year’s conference.  Our foray into digital publishing is a natural and necessary step forward in our role as a marketplace of knowledge exchange across discursive and geographic boundaries.

“Paradigmatic Conflict and Crisis” is currently accepting abstracts, which can be submitted online at http://mesaasgradconference.org until Monday January 21st, 2013.


6_1Marianna Reis is an MA student at Columbia University.  Her research interests include Palestinian identity, diaspora, and cinema.  She is currently conducting research on representations of identity in political cartoons featured in Palestinian newspapers during the First and Second Intifadas.