October 7, 2016
IHGC Presents
Mellon Fellows Symposium
October 7, 2016 - Friday
10.00am-12.30pm
142 Wilson Hall
10.00 -11.00 am
Fahad Bishara, Assistant Professor, Corcoran Department of History
"Monsoon Travelers: Dhows and the Trading Worlds of the Western Indian Ocean, c. 1800-1960."
11.00am -12.00 noon
Maya Boutaghou, Assistant Professor, Department of French
“Remapping Francophone Literatures and Cultures through a Global South Perspective: Provincializing France
12.00-12.30: General Discussion
12.30-1.00pm: Lunch
Bios:
Fahad Ahmad Bishara’s research interests lie in the fields of legal history and the history of capitalism – primarily in the Islamic world, but also beyond it. His current research traces the legal transformation of the Western Indian Ocean through the Arab and Indian settlement and commercialization of the East African coast during the nineteenth century. His book, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1940 is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. His next project is a microhistory, exploring the dhow trade in the Indian Ocean during the early twentieth century through logbooks left behind by Kuwaiti sea captains (nakhodas). He received his Ph.D. in History from Duke University in 2012, and holds an M.A. in Arab Gulf Studies from the University of Exeter. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, and he is an alumnus of the Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History.
Maya Boutaghou graduated from Université de Limoges in Comparative Literature. From 2008 to 2010, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California Los Angeles in the Center for Cultures in Transnational Perspective. She is the author of Occidentalismes : Romans historiques postcoloniaux et identités nationales au dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2016). Occidentalismes offers a new approach to the fields of comparative literature and postcolonial studies with poetical and textual perspectives on postcolonial literatures and cultural identity construction in 19th century (Australia, Bengal, Egypt, Mexico). Her second book focuses on plurilingual women writers in postcolonial contexts (Egypt, Bengal, Mauritius, and Algeria). She publishes extensively in comparative literature, Francophone, Arabic, and Anglophone postcolonial studies (Expressions Maghrébines, French Studies, International Journal of Francophone Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, Comparative Literary Studies). She recently guest-edited a special issue for l’Esprit créateur, « The Algerian War of Independence and its Legacy in Algeria, France and Beyond », Winter 2014, and a forthcoming book, Fictions et représentations de la guerre algérienne d’indépendance (Garnier, 2016). At UVa she will extend her major areas of expertise within postcolonial literatures and cultures as an IHGC Fellow in the Global South Initiative supported by the Mellon Foundation.
