Friday, December 3, 9:00 am - 5:45 pm
Saturday, December 4, 9:00 am - 3:50 pm


Rutgers Student Center
Graduate Student Lounge
126 College Avenue
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

and

Milledoler Hall, Room 100
520 George Street
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

A Graduate Student Conference, Trading Cultures: Migration and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Europe, will be held on December 3-4. Graduate students from around the world will present papers and Rutgers faculty will serve as discussants and moderators.

We are pleased to announce two special guests. Professor Will Kymlicka will speak on the topic “The Retreat from Multiculturalism in Europe.” Ms. Branwen Okpako will present her film Valley of the Innocent [Tal der Ahnungslosen] and lead a discussion of it.

All events are free and open to the public.

Program Schedule

FRIDAY
December 3, 2004


Morning: Rutgers Student Center
Graduate Student Lounge
126 College Avenue, CAC

Afternoon: Milledoler Hall, Room 100, CAC



9:00-9:20
Welcome and opening remarks

Prof. Gerald Pirog
Associate Director, Center for Comparative European Studies
Rutgers University

Dean Harvey Waterman
Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Graduate School
Rutgers University

Caterina Romeo
Transliteratures Fellow, Comparative Literature
Rutgers University


9:20-11:00
Panel I - Representing Multiculturalism and Social Conflicts
Chair: Wesley Brown

Department of English, Rutgers University

Kate Benward – Comparative Literature, NYU
Swallowing up the Margins: Dominant and Subversive Narratives of Multiculturalism in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

Caterina Romeo – Comparative Literature, Rutgers University
Questioning Race and the Color Line in Nassera Chora’s Volevo diventare bianca

Karina Sliwinski – German Literature and Culture, University of California, Berkeley
Photography, Migration and Memory in the Work of Turkish-German Author Emine Sevgi Özdamar

Elizabeth Holt – Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
Cartography and Clandestinité in Leïla Sebbar's Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts


11:00-11:15 Coffee Break


11:15-12:45
Panel II – Mechanisms of Inclusion and Exclusion: Citizenship, Integration, Liberalism
Chair: Jan Kubik

Center for Comparative European Studies, Rutgers University

Andreea Udrea – Graduate School of Social Research, The Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw (Poland)
Transnationality as a Socio-Economic and Political Strategy of Migrant Communities

Merih Anil – Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center
Theoretical and Practical Impact of German Citizenship Reform of 1999 on Turkish Immigrants in Berlin: Preliminary Findings

Ajay Singh Chaudhary – Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
The Simulacra of Morality: Islamic Veiling, Religious Politics and the Limits of Liberalism

Michael O. Sharpe – Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center
Globalization and Migration: A Preliminary Qualitative Study of the Political Incorporation of Dutch Caribbean Immigrants in the United States and the Netherlands


12:45-1:45 Lunch


N. B. All afternoon events will take place at Milledoler Hall, Room 100, CAC


1:45-3:15
Keynote Speaker: Professor Will Kymlicka

Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

3:30-5:45
Special Guest: Branwen Okpako

Film director
Winner of the Bavarian documentary film prize The Young Lion, and First Prize at the Dubrovnik Documentary Film Festival in 2001.
Screening and discussion of Valley of the Innocent
(Tal der Ahnungslosen, 2003)



6:00-7:30 Reception
Center for Comparative European Studies
172 College Avenue


SATURDAY
December 4, 2004


Rutgers Student Center
Graduate Student Lounge
126 College Avenue, CAC



9:00-10:20
Panel III – Representing Transnational Identities
Chair: Susan Martin-Márquez

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University

Sonia Sabelli – Women’s Studies, University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy)
Transnational Identities and the Subversion of Language in Contemporary Italian Literature

Matthew Sharpe – Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Transnational North Africans and the Liminal Imaginary

Adriana X. Tatum – Comparative Literature, Princeton
Unsafe Bodies: Transnational Collisions in Ronit Matalon’s Sarah, Sarah


10:30-11:30
Panel IV - Work and Labor
Chair: Barbara Cooper

Center for African Studies, Rutgers University

Aleta Aslani Styers – Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center
Migration of Workers into France and Germany

Luca Trappolin – Sociology, University of Padua (Italy)
Gender Victims and Cultural Borders: The Globalization of Prostitution in Italy


11:30-11:45 Coffee Break


11:45-1:00
Panel V – Mapping the Nation
Chair: Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Author

Christopher Lawrence – Cultural Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Re-bordering the Nation: Neo-liberalism and Neo-racism in Rural Greece

Irena Kašparová – Social Science, Masaryk University Brno, (Czech Republic)
Does Roma (Gypsy) Nationalism Exist?

Alessio Loreti – French, Birkbeck College, University of London (UK)
Mediterranean Migrations and Multiple Identities: The Italian Diaspora of Tunisia between Patriotism and French Assimilation


1:00-2:00 Lunch provided by the Center for Comparative European Studies



2:00-3:40
Panel VI - Politics of Location
Chair: Abena Busia

Department of English, Rutgers University

Nadeen M. Thomas – Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
On Headscarves and Heterogeneity: Perspectives on the French Foulard Affair

Alyssa Best – Women’s Studies, Rutgers University
Abortion Rights Along the Irish-English Border and the Liminality of Women’s Experiences

Tihomira Trifonova – Institute for Politics and Public Communications, Sofia (Bulgaria)
Self-definition and Self-representation of Arab Immigrants in Bulgaria

Peter Polak – History, Rutgers University
Outcasts of the Wild West: the Germans of the Oder-Neisse Territories, 1945-7


3:40-3:50 Conclusion



Conference Support gratefully acknowledged from

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The Academic Excellence Fund of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
The Graduate Student Association
The Program in Comparative Literature
The Transliteratures Project
The Black Atlantic Project and The Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
The Center for African Studies
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies

For further information contact:
The Center for Comparative European Studies
732-932-8551 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.