A panel discussion with distinguished experts on Afghanistan.

Monday, January 30, 2023
9:00 AM - 12:30 PM (Pacific Time)
193 Kaplan Hall

This panel will explore post-conflict challenges for cultural production, cultural studies and cultural rights in Afghanistan

Participants:

Khalilullah Afzali is a specialist of Persian literature and manuscript culture. Currently, he is a visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) where he teaches graduate seminars and conducts research. He is the founder of the Baisunghur Research Institute in Afghanistan, which focuses on study and preservation of the literary, cultural, and historical heritage of Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iran. In his research and teaching, he focuses on codicology, Sufism, literary history and Bidel studies. He published two books and more than thirty papers in Persian both in Iran and Afghanistan.

Sayed Hassan Hussaini works on Islamic governance, human rights, rule of law, and inter-religious studies at Marymount University. He is particularly interested in obstacles to the rule of law in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan. Other areas of interest include the relationship between the secular and the sacred, inter and intra-religious studies, dialogue among civilizations, human rights in minority Muslim countries, and good governance. His article on nation-building and the missed critical element of a unifying ideology in Afghanistan is forthcoming from the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Sharif Hozoori is currently a fellow at Cornell University. Dr. Hozoori's research focuses on cultural studies, foreign policy, and conflict resolution. His 2019 PhD dissertation looked at the role of political elites in foreign policy decisions in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2014. He is currently researching the causes for the recent government collapse in Afghanistan, focusing on corruption, a lack of transparency, inefficiency, and nepotism.

Homeira Qaderi is a scholar of Persian literature as well as a writer currently in residence at Harvard University. She is currently writing a novel inspired by her own experiences, with a working title of Tell Me Everything. It recounts the story of a girl from the Kabul suburbs who is kidnapped during the Soviet-Afghan war and taken to St. Petersburg. After the fall of the Soviet Union, she returns to her hometown, which is under Taliban rule. The novel follows her experiences living under the Taliban and through the American invasion to her eventual immigration to Delaware.

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, USC Department of Middle East Studies, MESA Global Academy.