By Sarah Burke
Sadder Than Water: poems by Samih al-QasimMaps
Several years ago I traveled in Tunisia with a friend. We felt pretty cool: we avoided the resorts, took local transport, ate local food, practiced our languages. One day we rolled into a town by the edge of the Sahara that is the starting point of many coordinated journeys into the desert—camels, sunset over the dunes, dinner cooked on a fire, etc. We had compared the reviews of several tour agencies in Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, volumes stored like talismans in our respective backpacks. As we emerged from the shared van into this new town, a man approached us and began talking about the agency he represented. It was the best, he said, the number one agency for trips into the desert.
This panel discussion and lecture series, sponsored by The Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore the landscape of American Middle Eastern ethnic comedy and its intricate relationship with Islamophobia.
Panel Members: Mucahit Bilici (Professor of Sociology at John Jay College-CUNY), Jordan Elgrably (Founder of Levantine Cultural Center, and the Sultans of Satire: Middle East Comic Relief) and Rahim Armat (of Kodoom.com, Cultural Events Search Engine).
Divahn: Jewish music of the Middle East in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Aramaic, Hebrew and Judeo-SpanishAnyone who thinks Jewish music equals klezmer needs to hear Divahn's Middle Eastern and Sephardic grooves. Fans first heard Divahn's energetic music deep in the heart of Texas. Today, this dynamic New York City-based quintet delights audiences throughout the country and has made numerous live radio appearances. Divahn infuses traditional songs with sophisticated harmonies and arrangements using tabla, cello, rabel, doumbek, violin and other acoustic instruments, plus vocals in Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, Persian, Arabic, Aramaic and Turkish.
Their beautiful lyricism flows through an intense rhythmic drive. The group distinguishes itself as the only all-female ensemble performing Mizrakhi-influenced music (Jewish music from
the Middle East and North Africa) in the US, and has performed with some of the world's most renowned master musicians, including Glen Velez and Anindo Chatterjee.
Christopher Caldwell on "What is the West's Problem with Islam?"
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West: your purchase benefits LCC programming Europe has received a wave of immigration from the global south in recent decades, similar in scope to the US-but very different in its results. Many immigrant and second-generation communities have astronomical unemployment rates and a thin connection to European identity. Some have produced terrorists. The problems are particularly severe among newcomers from the Muslim world.
If Europe has an Islam problem, whose fault is it? Is Islamic belief and culture incompatible with Western institutions? Or is there such a thing as "Islamophobia," poisoning immigrants' efforts to integrate on European terms?
Christopher Caldwell, who writes for the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and The Weekly Standard, visits Zócalo to talk about themes from his upcoming book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.
By Rachel Donadio
By Crystal Allene Cook
Read about the "Art Knows No Borders" event on November 18, 2008.
Arriving in Yerevan, Armenia on a Fulbright in 2004 to research a novel, I had some specific things in mind. Once on the ground, making friends, talking to people, traveling, many of my preconceived notions of those things, and of myself, soon began to change.
From October 24-26 in
Hollywood, Arpa International Film Festival will screen 50 films from 21
nations, including Armenia, Australia, Canada, China, Congo, Czech Republic,
Ecuador, France, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tobago,
Trinidad, Turkey, UK, and Venezuela.
Arpa International Film Festival, which goes green in 2008, is produced by Arpa Foundation for Film,
Music, and Art (AFFMA), a non-profit organization dedicated to artists
exploring identity, multi-culturalism, war, exile, genocide and global empathy.
The Silk Road Music & Dance Ensemble and the iST-West Ensemble will perform live with special guest vocalist Serpil Borazan. Featuring Rowan Storm on percussions, with Nyofu Tyson on saz, Neil Seigel on Azeri tar, Ergun Tamer on kanun and Robyn Friend performing dances of Turkey and Central Asia, plus additional musicians.
The Edge of Heaven: your purchase benefits LCC programmingFrom the exceptionally talented Turkish-German writer/director of “In July,” “Head On” and “Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul” comes one of our favorite movies of the year—a drama with six characters that bears repeat viewings. As Boston Globe critic Wesley Morris put it, “In just a couple of movies, 34-year-old Fatih Akin has become the most exciting of Europe's young directors, reinvigorating the melodrama with a furious kind of identity politics. Like ‘Head-On,’ his 2004 wrecking-ball romance, Akin's new ‘The Edge of Heaven’ is perched along the fault line of the current Turkish-German situation. And the more determined he is here to examine the chasm between the two sides, the wider and deeper the movie gets.