Elora Chowdhury

Liz Philipose

Often perceived as unbridgeable, the boundaries that divide humanity from itself--whether national, gender, racial, political, or imperial--are rearticulated through friendship. Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose edit a collection of essays that express the different ways women forge hospitality in deference to or defiance of the structures meant to keep them apart. Emerging out of postcolonial theory, the works discuss instances when the authors have negotiated friendship's complicated, conflicted, and contradictory terrain; offer fresh perspectives on feminists' invested, reluctant, and selective uses of the nation; reflect on how the arts contribute to conversations about feminism, dissent, resistance, and solidarity; and unpack the details of transnational dissident friendships. Contributors: Lori E. Amy, Azza Basarudin, Himika Bhattacharya, Kabita Chakma, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Laurie R. Cohen, Esha Niyogi De, Eglantina Gjermeni, Glen Hill, Alka Kurian, Meredith Madden, Angie Mejia, Chandra T. Mohanty, A. Wendy Nastasi, Nicole Nguyen, Liz Philipose, Anya Stanger, Shreerekha Subramanian, and Yuanfang Dai.

Feminism, Imperialism, and Transnational Solidarity

Dissident Friendships

Leila Farsakh

Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Rajini Srikanth

Erica Mena

Anna D. Beckwith

Askold Melnyczuk

Dorothy Shubow Nelson

Joyce Peseroff

This 2009 (VII) special issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge entitled “‘If I touch the depths of your heart’: The Human Promise of Poetry in Memories of Mahmoud Darwish,” is a commemorative issue on the life and poetry of the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, co-edited by a group of UMass Boston faculty and alumni. Other than keynote opening statements, the special issue is comprised of a selected series of longer and shorter poems by Mahmoud Darwish, followed by commemorative poetry and essays/articles that directly or indirectly engage with Mahmoud Darwish’s work and/or the subject matter of his passion and love, Palestine and human rights and dignity. Contributions include: Selections from the poetry of the late Mahmoud Darwish in two recently published collections: If I Were Another: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) translated by Fady Joudah, and another, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals (Archipelago, 2009), translated by Catherine Cobham; keynote contribution by UMass Boston Provost Winston Langley, keynote contribution of a poem by Martha Collins; and commemorative poetry or prose by the Palestinian-American poet, writer, and scholar Lisa Suhair Majaj, Amy Tighe, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Robert Lipton, Joyce Peseroff, Shaari Neretin, and Jack Hirschman; included are also essays/articles by Leila Farsakh, Rajini Srikanth, Erica Mena, Kyleen Aldrich, Nadia Alahmed, and Patrick Sylvain. Co-editors of the special issue were (alphabetically) Anna D. Beckwith, Elora Chowdhury, Leila Farsakh, Askold Melnyczuk, Erica Mena, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Joyce Peseroff, Rajini Srikanth, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (journal editor-in-chief). This “Class-Book” was a student/instructor self-publishing experiment in a course offered at Binghamton University (SUNY) taught by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi in Spring 1997 when he was a graduate student enrolled in BU’s doctoral program in Sociology. The course was freshly designed and titled, “Soc 280Z: Sociology of Knowledge: Mysticism, Science, and Utopia.” The class-book was designed and printed in less than two weeks by the instructor in order to make it available to students as soon a possible after the class. The “fake” publisher name proposed by a contributing student author (Ingrid Heller) and adopted by the contributors was the “Crumbling Façades Press.” The class-book experiment was one that eventually inspired and contributed to the launching of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (ISSN: 1540-5699, 2002-). It was dedicated to the living memory of the late Professor Terence K. Hopkins (d. 1997), the founding Director of the Graduate Studies program of the Department of Sociology at SUNY-Binghamton. Contributors to the volume include: Shannon Martin, Ian Hinonangan, Nicholas Jezarian, Jeff Alexander: Tears of a Clown, Meghan Murphy, Heather Mealey, Daniel B. Kaplan, Ingrid Heller, Martin Magnusson, Arturo Pacheco, Keira Kaercher, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi.

“If I touch the Depth of Your Heart … ” : The Human Promise of Poetry in Memories of Mahmoud Darwish

Elora Chowdhury

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