Al Jisser is accepting submissions for its upcoming book: Poets for Palestine.

The concept of this book was inspired by two spoken word shows held at The Bridge art gallery in Manhattan. The first show, the Poetic Injustice Poetry Show, took place in conjunction with the display of the Made in Palestine art exhibition. Excited by the intensity of spoken word, The Bridge brought back the Poetic Injustice Poetry Show for a second night. The second show was held during an equally moving exhibit, Three Arab Painters in New York. Al Jisser hopes to capture the energy of these two nights in Poets for Palestine. Through spoken word, we hope to invigorate those within the Arab community and individuals interested in the plight of Palestinians.
Poets for Palestine will primarily focus on issues pertaining to Palestine. However, we are accepting poems on other subjects (i.e. Lebanon and Iraq) as well as poems written in forms other than spoken word.

The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2006.

Submissions can be emailed to Poets4Palestine@gmail.com
or mailed to P.O. Box 255 New York, NY 10013.
Please do not submit more than 5 poems as we will be considering a large volume of work.
Sincerely,
Remi Kanazi
Editor

“Do not forget Lebanon, July 2006!”

The Freedom Theatre of Jenin Refugee Camp and The Freedom Theatre Foundation of Sweden, invites artist from all around the world to join the children of Jenin in an art exhibition.

The art exhibition will take place in The Freedom Theatre on the 23 of October 2006 and later tour around the world.

All artists are invited to send their works (paintings, animations, video-art, sound-installations etc.) by e-mail or by post not later then the 5th of October to The Freedom Theatre (address below). The Freedom Theatre will be responsible for the printing, delivery and installation.

A committee of prominent artists and children of the camp will select the exhibits to be displayed.

The art works will be exhibit in The Freedom Theatre compound along with chosen works of the children of Jenin, and then around the globe with Stockholm as a starting point.

All works will be shown on our web site as well as further information and updates: www.thefreedomtheatre.org


Juliano Mer Khamis, Dror Feiler and The Freedom Theatre Team

Post address:
The Freedom Theatre
Allenby 169a
Haifa, 355 14
ISRAEL

E-mail: donotforget@thefreedomtheatre.org (accepts high-resolution pictures)

Contact in Palestine/Israel:
Office: +972 (0)4 852 0175
Mobile: +972 (0)54 589 82 85, +972 (0)54 637 90 82, +972 (0)599 228 488
Contact in Sweden:
Office phone/fax: +46 (0)8 642 13 93
Mobile: +46 (0)70 28 55 777

Writing While Arab:Politics, Hyphens, and Homelands

Deadline: December 1, 2006

RAWI – the Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. – is organizing its second national conference in Dearborn, Michigan on May 17-20, 2007 at the Arab American National Museum. The conference welcomes RAWI members and others who are interested in engaging in the Arab American literary community. The conference will provide a venue to present our writings and ideas to one another and to the Detroit and Arab communities. Our gathering will offer an opportunity for colleagues to share strategies for publishing and circulating our work and also for confronting academic, community, and political barriers.

This year's conference theme, "Writing While Arab:Politics, Hyphens, and Homelands," seeks to address the multiple challenges Arab American writers face in an intensified post-9/11 climate.How is Arab American writing impacted by the targeting of Arabs (and Muslims) as the national enemy inside and outside of the U.S. and by the wars waged in our homelands?How do politics influence our writing – we are not only referring to how political events in the Middle East and the U.S.
inform our writing, but also the politics around the circulation of our writing.Are some Arab American writers benefiting from self-commodification and perpetuating Arab stereotypes? What kinds of narratives receive wide circulation and which do not? Is writing a form of political activism? How do RAWI members write out these tensions?

The organizing committee is accepting proposals for individual papers, entire sessions, presentations, performances, films, roundtables, workshops, conversations, and other non-traditional formats that address the theme of Arab American writing. All genres welcome – memoir, children's writing, poetry, performance, journalism, translation, fiction, blogs, spoken word, creative non-fiction,
academic writing, screenwriting, playwriting, etc. Proposals are welcome from those who are published and non-published, teachers and students, activists, publishers, historians, journalists, artists, novelists, filmmakers – experienced and beginners.

Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

• Writing about War: How have Arab American writings been influenced by the crises in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon?
• The Politics of Publishing While Arab: What kinds of challenges have Arab American writers faced in publishing? Is the nature of these challenges exclusively political?
• Beyond Coffee and Grape Leaves: What is the significance of Arab American writers working within these cultural motifs? What are their limitations?
• Conversations with other Hyphenated Writers: A dialogue with South Asian American, African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American writers.
• Poetic Textual Analysis:How do Arab American poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction perform aesthetically as works of art and as literary document?
• The Arab Blogosphere: How have blogs become an important site for Arab American writing?
  Mentoring and Offering Publishing Advice:What advice can experiences writers and editors offer to those who are starting out?
• Crossing Over & Bending Genres: Exploring the role of creative nonfiction, academic poetic writing, and other innovative forms of writing.

For individual submissions, please send a one-page abstract of approximately 250 words. For collective submissions please provide panel/roundtable/workshop title, list of presenters, and an abstract for the session that includes a description of what each individual will present. Please send your RAWI conference proposals as Word attachments via e-mail to Evelyn Alsultany (alsultan@umich.edu) and Deborah Alkamano (debnajor@rawi.org) by December 1, 2006.
Please include a 1-page resume or CV for each presenter.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Deadline December 15, 2006

We are now approaching the 500th anniversary of Portuguese contacts and relations with the Persian Gulf region and Safavid Persia, around the first attempts by Albuquerque to take Hormuz in 1507. As part of an exploration of the wider contacts of Portugal with Asia, Africa and South America, the Freer and Sackler Galleries (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington DC will commemorate this important historical moment with a series of exhibitions in the summer of 2007 entitled 'Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.'

This quincentennial is also the occasion for a conference on Portuguese relations with the Persian Gulf and Safavid Persia between 1500 and 1700, that will be held under the auspices of the Iran Heritage Foundation and the Freer and Sackler Galleries. The meeting is scheduled to take place on 8-9 September 2007 at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, coinciding with the last week of the exhibitions.

The meeting aims to examine various aspects of the activities of the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf basin and their interaction with other forces in the region, Safavid Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Arab principalities around the Gulf’s littoral, India, and rival European merchants active in the area. Topics to be discussed include sources and historiography, mutual perceptions, trade, diplomacy and politics, missionary activities, and cross-cultural exchange.

The members of the conference committee, Rudi Matthee, Jorge Flores, Farhad Hakimzadeh and Ann Gunter have the pleasure of inviting you to submit a proposal for a presentation at this scholarly gathering, which is designed to bring some twenty of the most well-know specialists in the field together.

Prospective participants should send an abstract of 300 words by 15 December 2006 to Farhad Hakimzadeh at farhad@iranheritage.org. Please submit abstracts in digital form using Microsoft Word. A CV should accompany each abstract. The conference language is English.

The papers presented in the conference will be published in a volume of proceedings, edited by Rudi Matthee and Jorge Flores. All papers submitted should therefore be of publishable quality, constitute new work, and reserved to be exclusively published as part of the conference proceedings. No previously published work should be submitted.
We are very enthusiastic about this meeting and hope and expect that it will generate a great deal of intellectual excitement.

For enquiries contact Farhad Hakimzadeh, Iran Heritage Foundation, 5 Stanhope Gate, London W1K 1AH, United Kingdom, T 44 20 74934766, F 44 20 74999293, E farhad@iranheritage.org.