• About Us

    Institute Coordinators

    Elora H. Chowdhury, Institute Co-Chair
    Elora is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She holds a Ph.D. from the Women's Studies Program at Clark University (2004). Her teaching and research interests are in critical development studies, third world/transnational feminsims, globalization and women's organizing in Bangladesh. Her work has appeared in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, and in edited anthologies. Currently, she is working on a book manuscript titled, Transnationalism Reversed: Engaging Development, NGO Politics, and Women's Organizing in Bangladesh.

    Leila Farsakh, Institute Co-Chair
    Leila is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts. She holds a PhD from the University of London (2003), and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in the UK (1990). She has published on questions related to Palestinian labor migration, the Oslo Peace Process, and international migration in a wide range of journals including Middle East Journal, the European Journal of Development Research, Journal of Palestine Studies and Le Monde Diplomatique. Her book, Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labor, Land and Occupation, has been published by Routedge Press in the Fall 2005.

    Rajini Srikanth, Institute Director
    Rajini is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her teaching areas include Literature of the American South, Asian American Literature, Native American Writing, Gender Issues, South Asian Diaspora; Race; Pedagogy. Rajini's research and writing interests include Asian American Studies, Race and Literature, Pedagogy and Multiculturalism, Native American Literature.

  • Her publications include "The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America" (Temple UP, 2004); "White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature" (SUNY Press, 2002); "Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing" (Rutgers, 2001) She has also co-edited several books, including "A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America" (Temple U.P., 1998); "Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America" (Asian American Writers' Workshop, 1996); "Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing" (Rutgers, 2001) She has also published in a variety of journals such as Mississippi Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism; Asian Pacific American Journal; Journal of Asian American Studies; The Subcontinental.

    Institute Coordinating Committee

  • Linda Dittmar
    Linda is a Professor of English at UMass Boston.  Her teaching areas include Film Studies, Twentieth-Century Fiction & Drama, Multicultural Literature, Literary & Film Theory, Women and Gender?Research & Writing Interests: Film, Cultural Studies, Narrative Theory, Gender, including independent and global cinemas, minority representations, and mixed genres.

  • Selected Publications:
    Books: ed. with G. Michaud, "From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film" (Rutgers 1990); ed. with D. Carson & J. Welsh, "Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism" (Minnesota 1994); ed. "Radical Teacher" , special issue on Media Studies (No. 50, 1997) Articles & Reviews in Mosiac, Novel, Boundry 2, Journal of Thought, Wide Angle, Melus, Iris (France); "Performing Gender in Boys Don't Cry"; "Suger and Spice and Everything Nice"; "Contemporary Cinemas in Girlhood" (eds. F. Gateward and M. Pomerance, 2002). "Regimes of Longing: Staggered Narration and the Persistence of Vision." Kolnoa (Tel Aviv, 2001).

    Darren Kew
    Darren is an Assistant Professor in UMass Boston’s Graduate Dispute Resolution program in the College of Public and Community Service. His areas of interests concentrate on the relationship between transformative conflict resolution methods and democratic development, particularly in terms of democratic institution building in Africa and the growth of political cultures that support democracy.

  • His most recent publications include “Building Democracy in 21st Century Africa: Two Africas, One Solution,” Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations (Winter/Spring 2005), “Democracy and Conflict,” 1 Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Journal 1 (Spring 2004), "The Third Generation of Nigerian Civil Society: The Rise of Nongovernmental Organization in the 1990s," in Adigun Agbaje, Larry Diamond, and Ebere Onwudiwe, eds. Nigeria's Struggle for Democracy and Good Governance: A Festschrift for Oyeleye Oyediran (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan UP, 2004), and "The 2003 Elections in Nigeria: Not Credible, but Acceptable?" in Robert I. Rotberg, ed. Crafting the New Nigeria: Strengthening the Nation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004). "Promoting Business Integrity in Nigeria: The Case of the Convention on Business Integrity," case study published by the United Nations Global Compact Learning Forum, February 2004.

  • Mohammad H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi
    Mohammad H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi is Assistant Professor of Sociology, teaching Social Theory at UMass Boston. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology (in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies) from SUNY-Binghamton and a B.A. in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley. His fields of theoretical specialization include Sociological Imaginations, Self and Society, World-Historical Sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Social Movements, and Utopias. Tamdgidi's research and teaching are framed by an interest in understanding how personal self-knowledges and world-historical social structures constitute one another. His continuing research on liberating social theory in self and world-historical contexts is pursued via critical comparative/integrative explorations of utopian, mystical, and scientific discourses and practices. Tamdgidi is the author of Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism (Paradigm Publishers, 2007) and is the founding editor of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, a publication of OKCIR: the Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics), which serves to frame his research and pedagogical initiatives. His writings have appeared in Review (Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center), Sociological Spectrum, Contemporary Sociology, and the Discourse of Sociological Practice, and are forthcoming in various edited collections.

  • Jennifer Howard, Research Assistant
    Jennifer is a first-year student pursuing a Masters of Science in International Relations at UMass Boston’s McCormick School of Public Affairs. Her developing research interests include the dynamics among rule of law, religion, and international conflict.

    Institute Participants

    Participants will include invited speakers and applicants drawn from a Call for Papers that we will post on academic websites devoted to studies of the Islamic world. We wish to limit the number of participants (not including the invited speakers and the members of this working group) to 15, so that we can ensure intimate and animated discussion of the complex issues raised. Each applicant will be asked to submit a proposal that describes the applicant's current efforts in exploring Islam and the Islamic world and addresses the following five questions:

  1. What is the central question/argument/idea that you would like to explore in your paper? Why is it important?
  2. Why are you interested in attending this institute?
  3. How are you currently engaged in the issues posed by the institute?
  4. What, if any, are the current initiatives on your campus to discuss Islam and the Islamic world?
  5. How will you use the outcomes of this institute on your campus? Do you anticipate institutional support for your plans?

Free and open to the public. Please join us!

*Conference Attendees with Disabilities :  Anyone requiring disability-related accommodations in order to fully participate in this event should contact Jennifer Howard by email at jennifer.howard003@umb.edu or by phone at 508-685-5988 as soon as possible.

The 2007 Fall Institute is made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.