Join us in conversation with emerging scholars tracing Horn of Africa connections to today’s global trends in popular politics, racial formation, and new forms of belonging.
Each lecture will be moderated by Jackson School Director Leela Fernandes followed by a Q&A session. RSVP for the series or individual talks by following this link.
This online series is sponsored by the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and African Studies Program, in partnership with the Center for Global Studies, Comparative History of Ideas, Near Eastern Languages & Civilization, Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.
LECTURE SCHEDULE – January 22 to March 17, 2021
Serawit Debele, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany
Have popular political protests in Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Sudan in the past decade allowed sexual minorities to imagine cultivating a world beyond the violence and injustices to which they have been subjected? This event is additionally co-sponsored by the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
Watch the recording of the Jan. 22 talk here.
Wednesday, Feb. 3 | Reconstruction, Reconsidered: Belonging and Urban Contestation in Mogadishu’s ‘Building Boom’ – 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. PT
Surer Mohamed, Scholar and Fellow, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
Despite a remarkable post-war building boom and returning diaspora, Somalia’s capital city remains contested. Ballooning property values and the refurbishment of public and private spaces continue to embody the politics of urban belonging, memory and violence of the past three decades. This event is additionally co-sponsored by Department of History at the University of Washington.
Watch the recording of the Feb. 3 talk here.
Wednesday, Feb. 10 | Rethinking Israeli Citizenship: The Case of Ethiopian Jews and Their Struggle for Naturalization Between 1955-1975 – 9:00-10:30 a.m. PT
Efrat Yerday, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at Tel Aviv University and Israel’s Chair of the Association for Ethiopian Jews
The story of Ethiopian Jewish immigration to Israel typically begins after 1975. But foregrounding the pre-1975 years offers a unique case study for understanding the Israeli-Jewish citizenship regime and immigrants who do not conform to the normative and racialized national character of citizenship. This event is additionally sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington.
Watch a recording of the Feb. 10 talk here.
Wednesday, March 3 | Policing Somali Refugees: Somali Refugee Resistance to State Violence -12:00 to 1:30 p.m. PT
Mohamed Abumaye, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, San Marcos
For Somali refugees, San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood and the camp at Dadaab, Kenya are connected carceral spaces. Both are governed by militarized techniques and technologies of surveillance and militarism, and both demand counter-technologies through which refugees survive and even thrive. This event is additionally sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington.
Watch a recording of the March 3 talk here.
Wednesday, March 17 | Ethiopia in Theory, Theory as Memoir – 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. PT
Elleni Centime Zeleke, Assistant Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University
Can Tizita, the Amharic term for memory and nostalgia as well as a musical form of lament, serve as a tool for capturing the untimely interference of the past in stories of the Ethiopian revolution?
Watch a recording of the March 17 talk here.
RSVP by following this link.