Engseng Ho is Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History at Duke University. He was previously Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy. He is currently interested in the international and transcultural dimensions of Islamic society across the Indian Ocean, and its relations to western empires. Ho has conducted research in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, and Southeast Asia. His book The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, is published by the University of California Press, in the California World History Libra… [read more»]

Titled after the lyrics of a 1969 Blue Mink song, Melting Pot, which advocates obliterating difference as a utopian means of “getting along,” this talk–using examples from deSouza’s own artwork–will examine different artistic strategies of erasure, redaction, translation and recuperation, and will further consider cross-disciplinary solidarities between art practices and other fields of investigation. Whether official or oppositional, the very nature of art doesn’t allow it to be fully disciplined within existing structures and hegemonies, and this talk will consider what, if any, radical solidarities may be generated through art’s undisciplined possibilities. […] [read more»]

Wendy Brown is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also affiliated with the Department of Rhetoric and with the graduate programs in Critical Theory and in Gender and Women’s Studies. [read more»]

This working paper discusses young, middle class activists’ attempts to remake people’s relationships to urban space in the aftermath of Mubarak’s resignation in February 2011. It examines the deep political-economic factors, from the Mubarak era, that led to a deluge of garbage cleaning and urban beautification projects, as well as campaigns to change people’s movement and behavior in public space. The reproduction of social hierarchies in these projects suggests the limits of revolutionary practice… [read more»]