April 8, 2011, Room 155 Granoff Music Center, Tufts University

9:30 – 10:00 Coffee and refreshments

10:00 – 10:10 Opening address Dean James Glaser (Tufts University)
10:10 – 10:15 Introductory comments: Kamran Rastegar (Tufts University)

Keynote address:
10:15 – 11:00 Nadia Bagdadi (Central European University)
“Reflections on the Arab Nahda in Translocal Istanbul – Impact, Influence and Limits”

Panel 1: New literary vistas
11:00 – 11:25 Elizabeth Holt (Bard College)
“Silk and Serialization: the Arabic Novel in Nineteenth-Century Beirut”

11:25 – 11:50 Jeffrey Sacks (University of California, Irvine)
“Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq and Language”

11:50 – 12:15 discussion
Chair of Panel 1: Elliott Colla (Georgetown University)

12:15 – 1:00 Lunch break

Panel 2: Comparative dimensions
1:00 – 1:25 Lital Levy (Princeton University)
“The Nahda in the World: Non-Western Literary Modernity in Comparative Perspective”

1:25 – 1:50 Spencer Scoville (University of Michigan)
“TBA (On Russian Influences on the Nahda)”

1:50 – 1:15 Mohammed Alwan (Tufts University)
“Salama Musa and the Meaning of Nahda”

2:15 – 2:40 discussion
Chair of Panel 2: Kamran Rastegar (Tufts University)

2:45 – 3:15 Coffee break

Panel 3: Historical reflections
3:00 – 3:25 Kenneth Garden (Tufts University)
“Aims and Authorizing Strategies of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s Kitab al-Tawhid“

3:25 – 3:50 Dana Sajdi (Boston College/Koç University, Istanbul)
“New Voices from the Street: The Levantine Eighteenth-Century Reconsidered”

3:50 – 4:15 Ilham Makdisi-Khuri (Northeastern University)
“The Conceptualization of the social in Arabic thought and language in Syria and Egypt, 1850-1920″

4:15 – 4:40 discussion
Chair of Panel 3: TBA

Reflections and discussion
4:45-5:30 Kamran Rastegar, Elliott Colla, Nadia Bagdadi

8:00  Conference dinner (participants only)