Land Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca and, most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and learn on this land.

Kurds, Displacement and Resilience

October 12-14, 2018

University of Toronto

Friday, October 12, 2018

Location: OISE/UT, Room 12-199

9:30AM-10:00AM        Arrival, Coffee, Registration

10:00AM-10:30AM  Welcome-Opening remarks

Sardar Saadi (PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Toronto)

Dr. Bonnie McElhinney (Principal of New College, University of Toronto)

Dr. Shahrzad Mojab (Director of Equity Studies, OISE/University of Toronto)

10:30AM-12:00PM  Panel 1: Resistance, Resilience, and Self-Reliance

Chair: Dr. Fırat Bozçalı (Anthropology, University of Toronto)

Presenters:

Susan Benson-Sökmen (History, University of Toronto)

‘Stories that Get in the Way’: The Women of Mount Ararat Rebellion and the Writing of Kurdish, Feminist, and Gender Histories in the Turkish Republic

Kamal Chomani (The Tahrir Institute for the Middle East Policy & Freelance Journalist)

Dependency and Revival (Rasan) of Kurdish Political Parties in Iran

12:00PM-1:30PM        Lunch (7th floor, Peace Lounge)

1:30PM-3:00PM         Panel 2: Labor and Survival Strategies among Displaced Kurds

Chair: Dr. Sümercan Bozkurt-Güngen (Social Science & Political Science, York University)

Presenters:

Dr. Deniz Duruiz (Anthropology, Northwestern University)

Migrant Labor: Continuation of Displacement by Other Means

Aram Mahmood (Economics, Komar University for Science and Technology)

Labor Market Situation for Syrian Refugees in Iraq: Case Study Arbat Refugee Camp- Kurdistan Region

Gülay Kılıçaslan (Sociology, York University)

From Solidarity to Exploitation: The Interaction between Kurdish Forced Migrants in Istanbul

3:00PM-4:30PM         Panel 3: Micro-histories of Kurdish Political Mobilization and

   Resistance

Chair: Dr. Ömer Özcan (Anthropology & Sociology, York University)

Presenters:

Elif Genç (Politics, The New School for Social Research)

Oral Histories of Resistance: The Toronto Kurdish Community Centre (Komal)

Dr. Özlem Belçim Galip (Anthropology, University of Oxford)

From Kurdistan to Europe: Kurdish Literary, Artistic and Cultural Activism by Kurdish Women Intellectuals

Dr. Michael Ferguson (History, Concordia University)

Towards a Microhistory of Kurdish Displacement: The Life and Death of Rahşan Demirel

4:30PM-5:00PM         Break

5:00PM-6:00PM         Keynote Speaker: Handan Çağlayan

                                       Formation of Kurdish Women's Identity in Praxis

7:00PM-9:00PM         Dinner, Dance & Music (7th floor, Peace Lounge)

Saturday, October 13, 2018

 Location: OISE/UT, Room 12-199

9:30AM-11:00PM        Panel 4: Cartographies of Violence: Contested Spaces, Urban

   Warfare and Territorial Control

Chair: Dr. Andrea Muehlebach (Anthropology, University of Toronto)

Presenters:

Dr. Amir Sharifi (California State University, Long Beach) & Dr. Ali Ashouri (San Diego State University)

Cultural Revival in the City of Kermanshan: A New Cartography of Contested Identities

Ronay Bakan (Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University & Fox International                  Fellow, Yale University)

The Roots of Insurgency: Micropolitical Dynamics of the Urban Warfare in Suriçi

Dilan Okçuoğlu (Political Studies, Queen’s University)

‘Even Our Dogs are Living in Exile’: Control and Resistance in Turkey's Kurdish Borderlands

11:00AM-12:30PM  Panel 5: Resilient Praxis: Art, Music and Dance

Chair: Dr. Chandni Desai (Equity Studies, University of Toronto)

Presenters:

Jon Bullock (Ethnomusicology, University of Chicago)

Music and/as Resistance: (Re)inventing the Kurdish National Anthem

Fethi Karakeçili (Ethnomusicology, York University)

‘What’s in a name?’:  The Problems in Classification of Kurdish Dance and Songs in Contemporary Turkey

Benjamin Haluk Bilgen (International Development Studies, York University)

Kurdish Group Dance as Resistance in Turkey

Nicholas Glastonbury (Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York, Graduate Center)

‘The Heart Beats in the Homeland’: Love, Exile, and Political Imaginaries in the Work of Mehmed Uzun

12:30PM-2:00PM        Lunch (7th floor, Peace Lounge)

2:00PM-3:30PM         Plenary Session: Resources to Support Kurdish Studies

Chair: Dr. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi (History & Near and Middle Eastern Civilization, University of Toronto)

Presenters:

Dr. Tom Ricks (Ret. Historian of Modern Middle East)

Travel Accounts and Missionary Letters: Social and Cultural Sources for Modern Kurdish History

Dr. Michael L. Chyet (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

Bibliographic Introduction to Kurdology

Blair Kuntz (Near and Middle Eastern Studies Librarian, University of Toronto)

Past Struggles and Future Prospects for Kurdish Publishing

6:00PM-9:00PM         Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto

Amir Hassanpour Memorial Lecture

Featuring Professor Joost Jongerden (Rural Sociology, Wageningen University)

State and Capitalism in Kurdistan: Imagining Alternative Futures

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Location: 7th Floor, Peace Lounge

1:00PM-3:00PM         Closing Remarks and the Future Plan