News and Announcements

The Hindi-Urdu Language and Culture Association, otherwise known as HULCA, is a space for students who are interested in Hindi and Urdu languages. Students are presented with an opportunity to learn the language, explore its literature, and celebrate its culture while connecting with other Hindi-Urdu enthusiasts. Students are able to engage and explore both languages outside of the classroom and create social connections with their peers. Their next event, “Khanay Shanay Night,” is a recipe scrapbooking night highlighting desi cuisines. Reminisce on your favorite foods on Wednesday, March 27th at 8:00 PM. The meeting will take place at the Cook Student Center in the Merle V. Adams room. Biryani will be served!

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin is holding a Middle Eastern Science Fiction translation contest open to all translators of languages from the MENA region. The winner will receive $1000 and the winning translation will be published in the fall issue of Y’alla: A Texan Journal of Middle Eastern Literature. Y’alla is a biannual publication that features fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction translated from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, and other languages of the MENA region. The contest deadline is July 1st, 2024.

The Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South, at the John W. Kluge Center of the US Library of Congress, focuses on the history and cultures of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and Oceania. Professor Alidou will be using the immense foreign language collections in the specialized reading rooms of the Library of Congress to pursue her research on "Life and Being Human in West Sahel African Women's Cultural and Literary Narratives."

Protest Arts, Gender, and Social Change: Fiction, Popular Songs, and the Media in Hausa Society across Borders (University of Michigan Press) examines how a new generation of novelists, popular songwriters, and musical performers in contemporary Hausa society are using their creative works to effect social change. This book empathizes with the reality of the forms of oppression, social isolation, and marginalization that vulnerable and underprivileged communities in contemporary Hausa society in Northern Nigeria and the Niger Republic have been experiencing from the mid-1980s to the present. It also highlights the ways in which song performances produce an intertextual dialogue between their lyrics and visual dramatic narratives to raise awareness against social ills, including gender-based violence and social inequalities exposed by biomedical health pandemics such as HIV and COVID-19. In these creative Hausa narratives, the oppressed and marginalized have agency in articulating their own experiences.

The Institute for Research on Women is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary feminist scholarship, activism, and community at Rutgers. Programming includes a weekly seminar for faculty and graduate students, the IRW Distinguished Lecture Series, and an undergraduate learning community—all tied to an annual theme. In 2024-2025 the IRW Seminar theme is “Knowing Otherwise: Haunting, Conjuring, and Spectral Encounters.”