During the fourth year, all NYUAD students produce a capstone project – either as an individual or team – in their major field. The capstone project is a demanding, yearlong endeavor aiming at a significant piece of research or creative work – an historical narrative, musical composition, performance, invention, documented experiment, scholarly thesis, or other form appropriate to the student’s goals. Unlike other courses in which faculty establish the structure and set assignments, students work independently with guidance from NYUAD faculty. The fundamental challenge is to extend oneself in making knowledge, reframing conventional approaches to an issue, or creating something new. This eight-day festival is the culmination of this yearlong process and a celebration of the work created across the arts and humanities.
Visual Arts Group Exhibition: "It's In Sight" Visual Arts capstones have been displayed in a series of solo and group exhibitions for the past five weeks. "It's In Sight" represents work from each of these students, as well as a selection of other students across the arts programs. The exhibition will be on display from Monday, May 2 - Sunday May 22 (including the evening hours of the A&H Capstone Festival) and features work by: Mariko Kuroda, Sara Dhafer Alahbabi, Hessa Al Saman, Khadija Toor, Nino Cricco, Jiwon Shin, Luis Morales-Navarro, Davit Avoyan, Juliana Bello and Krishan Mistry.
Robert Young, Dean of Arts & Humanities, NYUAD
5:10 - 6:15 PM The State (Panel 1)
Chair: Martin Klimke, Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities, NYUAD
Gayoung Lee “Is Neutrality Possible?: State Neutrality and the Liberal- CommunitarianDebate”
Emma Leathley Wars of Words: How UAE Think Tanks Use War on Terrorism Discourse to Produce Knowledge and Promote Policy
Clare Hennig The “Red Line” of Journalism: Shifting Visions of the Media in the UAE
Louis Plottel “The Lighter Our Task, the Heavier our Burden”: An Ethnography of Political Dissidence Among Punks and Anarchists in Indonesia
6:30 - 7:45 PM Identity (Panel 2)
Chair: Vasilis Molos, Visiting Assistant Professor, NYUAD
Anishka Arseculeratne Examining Appiah’s Identity and Cosmopolitanism Joanne Bui Lucky Ticket: Stories Veronica Houk Big Eaters and Champion Talkers: Meat, Animalization, and Animacy in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior
8:00 - 8:30 PM Relocation (Panel 3)
Chair: Justin Stearns, Associate Professor & Program Head of Arab Crossroads Studies, NYUAD Krishan Mistry Week Four Attempts Eight Clara Bicallho Maia Correia The Effect of Social Ties and Recruitment Agencies on Wages: A Case Study of Ugandan Migrants in the United Arab Emirates
8:30 PM Reception
SUNDAY MAYMAY 1 SUNDAY, 1
THE PROJECT SPACE, NYUAD ARTS CENTER
5:00 - 5:10 PM Welcome
ROOM 006, ROOM 006 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
MAY 2 - 22
MONDAY MAY 2 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
TUESDAY MAY 3 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
5 PM The Project Space, Arts Center Lobby
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101
Visual Arts Group Exhibition Opening Reception
Lamees Al Makkawy (Film & New Media) Torn Kandora Torn Kandora is a short narrative film that complicates incorrect perceptions and representations – of gender, clothing, family, and ways of life – of Arabs and the Arab World in Western media by depicting their impacts and consequences.
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101 Robson Beaudry (Film & New Media) The Edifice The Edifice is an exploration of choice, between living in memories of the past, or facing harsh realities in the present. Sam Ridgeway (Film & New Media) Shaheen As a Biology and Film double major, Sam Ridgeway conducted science research into the bacteria found in the gut of falcons. Through his fieldwork, Sam met with falconers and was inspired by the relationship they have with their birds. Shaheen is his short documentary that grants the audience access to the early morning rituals of the Royal Shaheen group in Dubai and looks into the connection between falconer and falcons.
Maddie Moore (Film & New Media) Remnants of the Hive Remnants of the Hive is the story of a girl who is faced with the role of caregiver as her grandfather’s memory deteriorates. By considering the parallels between the behaviors of bees and humans, this short narrative film explores the distinction between love and obligation, and the implications of sacrifice.
Imen Haddad (Film & New Media) Unlearner Inspired by the true events, namely the 1972 exodus of Asian Ugandans ordered by Iddi Amin, Unlearner identifies past and present conflicts of coexistence between ethnic Ugandans and Asian Ugandans.
Shakbut Al Kaabi (Film & New Media) 4555 4555 is a documentary that brings us into the culture of the license plate frenzy in the UAE. This documentary will challenge the notions and different aspects of this phenomenon and tradition, trying to reveal the layers of this culture. As I believe, identity is a big part of this phenomenon; people are trying to create a new identity for themselves and to shape up the distinctive relationship they have with this place, the UAE. The UAE is, relatively speaking, a new country and a new place, one that contains many nationalities and identities on its soil.
8:45 PM Mini Black Box Theater, Room 045
8:45 PM Mini Black Box Theater, Room 045
Sara Bahermez (Theater) تيب تــيبis a conceptual immersive journey that explores trauma, childhood and intimate spaces.
Sara Bahermez (Theater) تيب تــيبis a conceptual immersive journey that explores trauma, childhood and intimate spaces.
WEDNESDAY MAY 4 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
THURSDAY MAY 5 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
7:00 - 9:00 PM Arts Center Lobby
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101
Nia Wilson (Theater)
Imen Haddad (Film & New Media) Unlearner Inspired by the true events, namely the 1972 exodus of Asian Ugandans ordered by Iddi Amin, Unlearner identifies past and present conflicts of coexistence between ethnic Ugandans and Asian Ugandans.
Durational performance
Devour Devour is a game/performance that experiments with the game form’s potential to resist the pressure to resolve issues of racial identity into a harmonious whole.
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101 Ev Zverev (Film & New Media) Sam Ridgeway (Film & New Media) Shaheen As a Biology and Film double major, Sam Ridgeway conducted science research into the bacteria found in the gut of falcons. Through his fieldwork, Sam met with falconers and was inspired by the relationship they have with their birds. Shaheen is his short documentary that grants the audience access to the early morning rituals of the Royal Shaheen group in Dubai and looks into the connection between falconer and falcons.
8:45 PM Mini Black Box Theater, Room 045 Sara Bahermez (Theater) تيب تيبis a conceptual immersive journey that explores trauma, childhood and intimate spaces.
Shakhbut Al Kaabi (Film & New Media) 4555 4555 is a documentary that brings us into the culture of the license plate frenzy in the UAE. This documentary challenges the notions and different aspects of this phenomenon and tradition, trying to reveal the layers of this culture.
8:15 PM Arts Center Lobby Julianna Bello (Music) Ámame Como Amas Ámame Como Amas is a four-song EP that finds itself at intersections between the specific styles within three different geographic genres.
9 PM Black Box Theater Noor Al-Mahruqi (Theater) Bil3arabi What does it mean to be an Arab today? Drawing inspiration from different modes of performance such as Arabic hip-hop, spoken word poetry and stand-up comedy, Bil3arabi invites the audience to question the role language has in forming identity.
FRIDAY MAY 6 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
SATURDAY MAY 7 NYUAD ARTS CENTER
7:00 - 9:00 PM Arts Center Lobby
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101
Nia Wilson (Theater)
Robson Beaudry (Film & New Media) The Edifice The Edifice is an exploration of choice, between living in memories of the past, or facing harsh realities in the present.
Durational performance
Devour Devour is a game/performance that experiments with the gameform’s potential to resist the pressure to resolve issues of racial identity into a harmonious whole.
Ev Zverev (Film & New Media)
7 PM Screening Room, Room B101
8:15 PM Arts Center Lobby
Maddie Moore (Film & New Media) Remnants of the Hive Remnants of the Hive is the story of a girl who is faced with the role of caregiver as her grandfather’s memory deteriorates. By considering the parallels between the behaviors of bees and humans, this short narrative film explores the distinction between love and obligation, and the implications of sacrifice.
Julianna Bello (Music) Ámame Como Amas Ámame Como Amas is a four-song EP that finds itself at intersections between the specific styles within three different geographic genres.
Lamees Al Makkawy (Film & New Media) Torn Kandora Torn Kandora is a short narrative film that complicates incorrect perceptions and representations – of gender, clothing, family, and ways of life – of Arabs and the Arab World in Western media by depicting their impacts and consequences.
Noor Al-Mahruqi (Theater) Bil3arabi What does it mean to be an Arab today? Drawing inspiration from different modes of performance such as Arabic hip-hop, spoken word poetry and stand-up comedy, Bil3arabi invites the audience to question the role language has in forming identity.
9 PM Black Box Theater
SUNDAY MAY 8
ROOM 006, NYUAD ARTS CENTER 5:00 - 5:10 PM Welcome
Robert Young, Dean of Arts & Humanities, NYUAD
5:10 - 6:15 PM VIOLENCE (Panel 4)
Chair: Martin Klimke, Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities, NYUAD
Isabelle Galet-Lalande Beta Boys: Reframing Masculinity, Violence, and Vulnerability in Online Rap Communities Cian Dianan Violence, Madness, and Masculinity in the Congo Free State Helina Yigletu Waiting for the Dawn: An Ethiopian Novel in Translation
6:30 - 7:45 PM TIME & MIGRATION (Panel 5)
Chair: Werner Sollors, Global Professor of Literature, NYUAD
Zoë Hu Disorderly Time in Jhumpa Lahiri and Amitav Ghosh: Narrative Studies as a New Strategy for Reading Migration Novels Rasha Shraim Time Travel and Leibniz's Law Diana Gluck Britain’s “Pantomime Horse” Sets the Pace: Mobility in the Trucial States, 1950 - 1970
8:00 - 8:45 PM COMMUNITY, CONNECTIVITY & COMMUNICATION (Panel 6) Chair: Vasilis Molos, Visiting Assistant Professor, NYUAD
Benjamin Leb Reasoning about Promises Luis Morales-Navarro Material Fictions: A Borgesian Approach to Digital Access to Information Krishan Mistry A Book-length Poem About Family History Samia Meziane Cosmopolitan Literary Education: Countering the Nationalist Narrative in English High Schools
8:45 Reception
HUMANITIES ABSTRACTS Anishka Arseculeratne Examining Appiah's Identity and Cosmopolitanism
Cian Dinan Violence, Madness, and Masculinity in the Congo Free State
In his book Ethics of Identity, Appiah explores the messy territory of the relation among identity, individuality, and ethics. His exploration begins with his view of the nature of the self and leads to his view about the obligations that individuals have toward others, which he calls Rooted Cosmopolitanism. Appiah›s work draws upon liberal and communitarian ideas which have been in tension since the inception of the liberal-communitarian debate in the 1980s. In each case, Appiah deliberately places himself in the middle ground between liberal and communitarian ideas. In this paper I aim to systematise both Appiah›s view of the self and his Rooted Cosmopolitanism, and examine the relation between the two views. I will then locate each view on the spectrum of ideas between those of the hardline liberal and the hardline communitarian to determine whether or not his view is coherent and truly original.
At the turn of the twentieth century, violent conditions in the Congo Free State colony of Belgian King Leopold II sparked international outcry. Reformist literature surrounding the London-based Congo Reform Association criticized the King and his colony by inverting imperial discourse, identifying Leopold’s State with excess, savagery, and madness. Yet by recycling the terms of this discourse, CRA writers perpetuated an imperialist ideology based on a masculine ideal of the colonizer. The stories of British consul Roger Casement and Belgian colonial officer Ekuma (Charles Liwenthal) challenged this masculine ideal and undermined imperial ideology in both the Congo Free State and Britain, revealing a gendered foundation for colonial violence.
Joanne Bui Lucky Ticket: stories A collection of short stories about the Vietnam war: of those who stayed behind and those who left as refugees. It follows the old ban on literature about South Vietnam and anti-communist writing, now settled into silence and pressure to forget. How do people move on, and how different is it across the diaspora, that ranges from Saigon to Paris to Melbourne? How do we carry the ghosts of our counterparts, brothers and sisters who stayed when we left? Clara Bicallho Maia Correia The Effect of Social Ties and Recruitment Agencies on Wages: A case study of Ugandan Migrants in the United Arab Emirates This paper examines the effect of having social ties with co-nationals in the destination country prior to migrating and the use of recruitment agencies on the experiences and wages of Ugandans in the United Arab Emirates. The study draws from original survey data as well as in-depth interviews with Ugandan migrants in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and government officers, recruiters and aspiring migrants in Kampala, Uganda in order to present an overview of the history and structures shaping Ugandan migration to the UAE. It also demonstrates an approach that acknowledges the simultaneous role of institutions and social networks in affecting decisions and outcomes in the context of migration to the Gulf.
Isabelle Galet-Lalande Beta Boys: Reframing Masculinity, Violence and Vulnerability in Online Rap Communities How do we perform masculinity in contemporary culture, and has this changed in the advent of Web 2.0? Do music and culture bear a causal or a correlative relationship to violence in our world, physical or virtual? These questions form the basis of my ethnographic new media investigation into the music and online identities of the Beta Boys, a polarizing American rap collective named after the ‘beta male’ subculture that originated as an online counterpoint to the alpha male/Übermensch archetype. Through interviews and musical analysis of the Beta Boys’ leader, Wolfe Barrett, I delve into new academic territory to explore one of the most complex embodiments of public and private violence in the U.S. today: school shootings, musical minstrelsy as structural violence, the unequal gendering of online spaces, sexual violence, and the cultural framing of vulnerability and trauma as essentially un-masculine traits. Diana Gluck Britain’s “Pantomime Horse” Sets the Pace: Mobility in the Trucial States, 1950-1970 This project focuses on the impact of British involvement on the policies and procedures affecting human mobility in the Trucial States (the modern day UAE) from 1950-1970. By concentrating on ‘mobility’, this project not only looks to events, developments, and policies related to formal or permanent migration, but also to how these factors affect the ease of movement enjoyed by foreigners moving within, as well as into, the Trucial States. To arrive at the British impact on mobility, this project analyzes British correspondence, which reveal the opinions and actions taken by British administrators in the
Gulf, relative to those of the local rulers, towards immigration and labor policy. Analysis of this correspondence, in context with both regional and British interests, suggests that the British were highly influential on the ever increasing restrictions placed on mobility through their implementation, enforcement, and advisement (of local rulers) on both labor and immigration policies. Clare Hennig The "Red Line" of Journalism: Shifting visions of the media in the UAE This project focuses on the gap between the vision of journalism in the UAE and the position of the press in practice. The first two chapters piece together a history of journalism in the country alongside a theoretical discussion of the role and responsibilities of the press in society. This is followed by an examination of the UAE’s canon of media law and news analysis of national newspapers. Despite a push to foster journalism in the country, the legal framework has not yet caught up with the purported vision of the press. This dichotomy of informal promises on the one hand and the formal legal cannon on the other is one of the biggest challenges the press currently faces in the UAE. This creates uncertainty in the newsroom, ultimately leading to an inclination towards self-censorship when reporting sensitive issues because of a fear of crossing the ‘red line’ of journalism. Veronica Houk Big Eaters and Champion Talkers: Meat, Animalization, and Animacy in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior Critical work on The Warrior Woman: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston has recognized food, cooking, hunger, eating, appetite, and orality—hereby glossed under the term consumption—as important sites of meaning and has particularly considered how texts use these spaces to navigate Asian-ethnic American identities. However, no current articulations emphasize the centrality of meat—food made from the bodies of animals, ghosts, or even humans—in the narrative, nor have they accounted for the difficulty with which the characters transform these beings into sustenance. By analyzing the ways that characters claim access to other beings’ bodies through meat, as a literal product and a metaphor for objectified people, I argue that acts of eating in the text are founded on the motif of violence and dominion as a means of stabilizing one’s own identity. This project, after engaging in close readings of The Warrior Woman, a foundational text of Chinese American experience, turns to contemporary memoirs by Asian American authors to observe that these texts have inherited premier concerns with meat as a means of reflecting and creating their American identities. In short, by studying meat in The Woman Warrior and other memoirs by Asian Americans, my project explicitly adds animals to and expands the conversation about how consumption emerges as a crucial interest in these texts.
Zoë Hu Disorderly Time in Jhumpa Lahiri and Amitav Ghosh: Narrative Studies as a New Strategy for Reading Migration Novels” This project relies on the field of narrative studies to demonstrate how migration novels by Lahiri and Ghosh espouse conceptions of migration temporalities that stray from the irreversible, often times oppressive, model of linear time. Employing concepts of narrative temporality, I argue that these texts attribute more agency to the fictional migrant and promote an optimistic sense of migration in which the homeland can be recovered from a shifting, malleable experience of time. This project thus highlights narrative form as a productive site where new conceptions of time and migration in literature can thrive and converge. Emma Leathley Wars of Words: How UAE Think Tanks Use War on Terrorism Discourse to Produce Knowledge and Promote Policy From Nepal to Russia to China, states have repurposed the ideas of the American war on terrorism for their own agendas. This project asks how think tanks in the United Arab Emirates, closely integrated with the state, employ the discourse of the war on terrorism in producing knowledge and promoting policies. Situating a critical analysis of four UAE think tanks’ publications in a Gramscian framework for understanding international civil society, I argue that these think tanks repeat, repurpose, and even remake war on terrorism discourse. Ultimately, this project shows that the reproduction of hegemonic discourses is an interactive process, and paints textured picture of how world powers discursively produce political reality. Ben Leb Reasoning about Promises In his recent book, Shaping the Normative Landscape, David Owens presents a view on the value and function of obligation. This account includes a theory of promissory obligation that is very different from established thought on the subject. In my capstone, I hope to provide a critical summary of Owens’ view. I will examine the extent to which promises require us to change our thinking about what to do and provide an interpretation of Owens’ explanation of how this happens. Finally, I evaluate cases in which we are exempt from fulfilling our promises and provide an alternative to Owens’ mechanism for dealing with these cases based on his analysis of how promising should change our practical reasoning.
Gayoung Lee “Is Neutrality Possible?: State Neutrality and the Liberal-Communitarian Debate” We are surrounded by views of all kinds, especially when it comes to the good life and what it constitutes. This poses a problem for states who want to cater to everyone’s views. For liberal states that try to respect individual liberty, a plurality of views means it is harder for states to act while keeping their commitment to catering to all the views in their society. Liberals nonetheless claim to have the answer to this problem - state neutrality. However, the idea of state neutrality has come under intense scrutiny by thinkers known as the communitarians, sparking off the liberal-communitarian debate. I will examine the arguments by communitarians in this debate and use them to assess models of state neutrality put forward by various liberals. Samia Meziane Cosmopolitan Literary Education: Countering the Nationalist Narrative in English High Schools I argue that literary education has helped to form and perpetuate English national identity. Literary education has been called upon at various times throughout history to inspire nationalistic sentiment. Consequently, literary education in English schools has long harboured a narrative of English cultural and intellectual superiority that has contributed to the continuation of English cultural imperialism. Prompted by recent reforms that aim to make this narrative even more explicit, and in opposition to the deep seated nationalism of literary education in England I propose the need for a Cosmopolitan literary education. Building upon Kwame Anthony Appiah’s model of cosmopolitanism, and using theories of world literature and literary value, I present a working plan for a cosmopolitan literary education that relies upon a cosmopolitan reading model and a cosmopolitan approach to selecting materials. Krishan Mistry Week Four Attempt Eight What is family history? Why do we care about it? Where is family history? Is it over here? Is it over there? How do we learn family history? What is my family history? What do you know about it? What does she know about it? What has been forgotten? What can’t be said? What won’t be said? What was written down? What was lost? What did my parents tell me? What did their parents tell them? What was kept secret? Where was I? Where am I now? What can be written? What did I write?
Luis Morales-Navarro Material Fictions: A Borgesian Approach to Digital Access to Information “Material Fictions: A Borgesian Approach to Digital Access to Information” explores how we identify, store, access, and experience information by rereading Jorge Luis Borges’s “fictions” on libraries, memories, archives and encyclopedias in a post-digital context. When Borges wrote “Tlön: Uqbar Tertius Orbis,” “The Aleph,” “The Library of Babel,” and “Funes, His Memory” — containing devices, libraries, and minds that embody all information of the past and the present — transatlantic telephone calls were not possible. What for the reader of his time was fantastic, improbable, and magical is today our quotidian reality. The project embraces a continuum between pre-digital and post digital thought by considering how information is accessed in terms of the materiality/immateriality of language, code, and data and the dynamics of power and control behind data creation, organization, and retrieval. “Material Fictions” approaches access to information through archival research, critical analysis, and programming of several media objects that become post-digital iterations of Borges›s speculative fictions. Louis Plottel “The Lighter Our Task, the Heavier our Burden”: An Ethnography of Political Dissidence Among Punks and Anarchists in Indonesia Punk and anarchism, as lived practices that espouse anti-authoritarianism and prefigurative politics as their guiding principles, have shared a close affinity. Yet, the political value of punk has tended to be overlooked in favor of the punk “identity.” This paper considers the overlapping politics of anarchists and punks in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, through ethnographic description of the everyday practice of political dissidence. I approach punk from an anarchist point of view, analysing it as an expression of prefigurative politics. Drawing upon fieldwork with members of a newly formed anarchist website, anarkis.org, and a punk squat in the north of the city, I show how political dissidents in Indonesia are fostering connections to global punk and anarchist movements through their everyday lives. I contend that punks play an important role in the embodiment of anarchism as a political way of being, while revealing the contours and complexities of radical political movements in Indonesia. Rasha Shraim Time Travel and Leibniz's Law Leibniz’s Law can be summed up in the following: if a is identical with b, every quality of a will be a quality of b. Time travel, which is possible according to our best physics, entails that the same thing can be in two places at the same time. If we go back to Leibniz’s Law, it tells us that the same thing cannot be into places at the same time because that entails having different qualities (namely, being in different locations). Leibniz’s Law and time travel seem to be incompatible. More broadly, time travel represents a complex case of the
problem of change while Leibniz’s Law constitutes the foundation of material identity. In my capstone project, I examine different philosophical views that attempt to resolve the broader tension between the problem of change and material identity in Leibniz’s Law. I evaluate these views based on whether they are able to explain the specific case of time travel and offer a potential refinement. Helina Yigletu Waiting for the Dawn: An Ethiopian Novel in Translation This project is a hybrid of creative and analytic work involving translation of several chapters of the Ethiopian novel Letum Aynegalegn (Waiting for the Dawn) and a critical piece that serves both as an introduction to the novel and a reflection on the translation process. Drawing on translation theory and praxis and theories of world literature, I argue that current practice in the translation, publication and circulation of world literature texts relegates minor language literatures to the fringes of the global literary scene, especially works that are not written for a global market, exist in tension with the language and culture of their origins, and thus resist easy cultural translation. At the same time this project criticizes this tendency in literary practice for making translation into a major language a prerequisite for a work to attain literary significance, it operates within the same framework in its attempt to carve a presence for Ethiopian literature on a global literary map through translation into English.
Photo Credits Cover (left to right): Krishan Mistry, Mariko Kuroda, Colonel Freddie De Butts and Hugh Nicklin, Sam Ridgeway; Page 1: Sam Rideway; Page 3: Jiwon Shin; Page 8: Maddie Moore; Page 10: NYUAD Theater Program; Page 11: Krishan Mistry. Design by Meredith Meer
